Camille Flammarion

One day, the life of twelve-year-old Omega changes into a computer game. The key to winning each successive level is to perform tasks and orders sent by text message. Performing a task wrongly means losing your life. The backdrop for Omega’s adventures is Warsaw, but distorted by the author’s imagination. By playing with some classic literary and cultural motifs, such as the recently fashionable zombie, some bureaucratic time thieves inspired by Michael Ende’s Momo, and the sort of diagnoses elaborated by Jungian psychoanalysis, Szczygielski takes up an intelligent, postmodern dialogue with the reader. The clear, stage-by-stage structure of the game set within the refined and unconventional reality of an alternative Warsaw, and also the interesting narrative experiment, place Omega on a par with the novels of fantasy writers such as Neil Gaiman and China Melville. Just like them, Szczygielski moves away from the set formulae to create an original world full of verve and energy. As a novel about growing up, Omega could be said to belong to the “Bildungsroman” genre. Each level of the game represents the next stage in the development of the heroine’s personality. What will the final outcome be for her? A victorious step into conscious maturity, or a catastrophe that means losing her identity? • Recognition award in Halina Skrobiszewska Children Literature Contest and incorporation into the Polish Museum of Children's Books Treasure List, 2010 • Recognition award in the Most Beautiful Books of the Year 2009 Contest organized by the Polish Association of Book Publishers • Book of the Year 2010 in the contest organized by the Polish section of IBBY - International Board on Books for Young People, 2011

Bk. I: The earth. The earth in the heavens -- How the earth rotates round itself and revolves around the sun -- How the earth revolves round the sun -- the fourth motion of the earth -- Perturbations of the earth and motion of the sun in space -- Theoretical and experimental proofs of the motions of our globe -- The earth as a planet -- The earth and its origins -- bk. II: The moon. The earth's satellite -- The phases of the moon -- The motion of the moon around the earth -- The moon's effects on the earth -- Physics of the moon -- Eclipses -- bk. III: The sun. The sun's empire -- How the distance, size and mass of the sun are measured -- Survey of solar physics -- The photosphere -- Atoms and spectrographs -- The message of the solar spectrum -- Eclipses of the sun -- The chromosphere and prominences -- The corona -- The sun and the earth -- Inside the sun. Bk. IV: The planets. Real and apparent motions -- The planet Mercury -- The planet Venus -- The planet Mars -- The minor planets -- Jupiter, the giant planet -- Saturn -- Uranus -- The frontiers of the solar system -- bk. V: Comets, meteors and meteorites. Comets in human history -- The motion of comets in space -- The constitution of comets -- Meteors and meteorites -- Bk. VI: The sidereal universe. The constellations -- The measurement of stellar positions -- The brightness and number of the stars -- The distances of the stars -- The proper motions of the stars -- Double stars -- Stellar spectra -- Radial velocities, spectroscopic binaries -- Eclipsing binaries -- The diameters, masses and brightnesses of stars -- variable stars -- Novae and supernovae -- The planetary nebulae, the Wolf-Rayet stars -- Star clusters -- The constitution, chemistry and evolution of the stars -- The diffuse nebulae -- Radio astronomy -- The galaxy -- Extragalactic nebulae -- bk. VII: The instruments of astronomy -- bk. VIII: Artificial satellites and space vehicles. Elements of extra-terrestrial ballistics -- One step: rockets -- Artificial satellites -- Space probes -- The prospect before us: astronautics -- Some astronomical data.

What happens when you bring to life a huge acoustic sound wave and a gigantic spark of static electricity? You get Thunder and Lightning! Now imagine what would happen if these two fictional characters get into a big fight on a dim dark Saturday night! Follow their battle to see how they whimsically banter back and forth as the clouds and the stars cheer them on. Find out, Who Won The Fight? Who Won The Fight? Who Knocked Who, Out Of Sight?

Camille Flammarion (1842-1925) began his career at 16 as a human computer under the great mathematician U. J. J. Le Verrier at the Paris Observatory.  He soon tired of the drudgery; he was drawn to more romantic vistas, and at 19 wrote a book on an idea that he was to make his own—the habitability of other worlds.  There followed a career as France’s greatest popularizer of astronomy, with over 60 titles to his credit.  An admirer granted him a chateau at Juvisy-sur-l’Orge, and he set up a first-rate observatory dedicated to the study of the planet Mars. Finally, in 1892, he published his masterpiece, La Planete Mars et ses conditions d’habitabilite, a comprehensive summary of three centuries’ worth of literature on Mars, much of it based on his own personal research into rare memoirs and archives.  As a history of that era, it has never been surpassed, and remains one of a handful of indispensable books on the red planet. Sir Patrick Moore (1923-2012) needs no introduction; his record of popularizing astronomy in Britain in the 20th century equaled Flammarion’s in France in the 19th century.  Moore pounded out hundreds of books as well as served as presenter of the BBC’s TV program “Sky at Night” program for 55 years (a world record).  Though Moore always insisted that the Moon was his chef-d’oeuvre, Mars came a close second, and in 1980 he produced a typescript of Flammarion’s classic.  Unfortunately, even he found the project too daunting for his publishers and passed the torch of keeping the project alive to a friend, the amateur astronomer and author William Sheehan, in 1993. Widely regarded as a leading historian of the planet Mars,  Sheehan has not only meticulously compared and corrected Moore’s manuscript against Flammarion’s original so as to produce an authoritative text, he has  added an important introduction showing the book’s significance in the history of Mars studies.  Here results a book that remains an invaluable resource and is also a literary tour-de-force, in which the inimitable style of Flammarion has been rendered in the equally unique style of Moore.