Pamela McCorduck

Explore the unexplored - enter The Wilds of the Forgotten Realms(R)! On the border of a dangerous, magically unstable area called the Plaguewrought Lands, the leader of a cult seeking the spread of this wild magic and an alchemist who wants to control it join forces and create an elixir that allows pilgrims to survive the Plaguewrought Lands. But only one can succeed. A young man with strange powers and a priestess of the god of death will help determine who.From the Paperback edition.

"The "official future" says that women are moving toward equality with men. If not in our lifetime, we say, then in our children's. Think again." "If the rate of change during the last twenty years holds, it would be 2270 before women and men were equally likely to be top managers of major corporations." "In The Futures of Women, Pamela McCorduck and Nancy Ramsey explore four dramatically different alternatives for the coming years. Using a powerful new way of understanding trends - scenario planning - the authors paint these vivid landscapes: "Backlash," "A Golden Age of Equality," "Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back," and "Separate - and Doing Fine, Thanks." Each scenario has its own inner logic, firmly grounded in today's events, today's demographic and social trends, and in tomorrow's technological promises, but each one derives from a different combination of the political, social, and economic conditions that could prevail over the next twenty years.^ The authors' report from the recent UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing further supports their scenarios." "The book began as a project for the Global Business Network, a unique consulting firm whose scenario planning methods have helped governments, policymakers, and business leaders create effective strategies for the future. Decisions take on new meaning when we can "live" for awhile in the world that would result from a course of action we're now considering." "Imagine a world where as many women as men are elected to the U.S. Congress. Or, a world where fear for personal safety causes women to don the Muslim chador on Western streets. Or, imagine a national economic policy influenced by giant pension funds whose managers and clients are mainly women. Or, a world where exclusive resorts cater to the sexual needs of busy women executives." "Are any of these worlds in our future? Any one of them could be.^ Only by understanding how we could move from here to there - how the choices we make today could actually play out - can we hope to influence which future comes to pass."--BOOK JACKET.

The term 'fifth generation' refers to the computers now being designed as part of an ambitious national project at the Institute of New Generation Computer Technology (ICOT) in Tokyo. According to Kazuhiro Fuchi, direc- tor of ICOT, the project is intended to create machines and programs that can eMciently process symbolic information for artificial intelligence applications. He calls them KIPS for 'knowledge information processing systems'. The boldness of the Japanese plan and the level of public and industrial support for it ($855 million over 10 years) have attracted considerable international atten- tion, debate, and controversy. Feigenbaum and McCorduck's book will be read by almost everyone inter- ested in the Japanese 5th generation computer project. It is about what the Japanese are doing, what their plans are, and what they might realistically accomplish. It is also about the state of the art in knowledge engineering, the importance to the military of a technological edge, the alternatives for an American response, and advice about placing one's bets in research. "What are the objectives of the fifth generation project? .... Will the Japanese succeed? .... What should the American role be?" Questions like these, which surround the fifth generation project, do not yield to one-dimensional answers. Here the authors show breadth and skill at finding and weighing relevant factors. For example, they examine the Japanese strengths and weaknesses, and the technological costs and risks in three short chapters: "What's Wrong", "What's Right", and "What's Real". So what's wrong? "The science upon which these plans are laid lies at the outermost edge (and in some cases, well beyond) what computer science knows at present. The plan is risky; it contains several 'scheduled breakthroughs'". The project needs early successes to maintain momentum. Computer science education is mediocre in Japan, and there are few computer scientists to make Artificial Intelligence 22 (1984) 219-226 0004-3702/84/$3.00© 1984,ElsevierSciencePublishersB.V.(North-Holland

"Pamela McCorduck first went among the artificial intelligentsia when the field was fresh and new, and asked the scientists engaged in it what they were doing and why. She saw artificial intelligence as the scientific apotheosis of one of the most enduring, glorious, often amusing, and sometimes alarming, traditions of human culture: the endless fascination with artifacts that think. Machines Who Think was translated into many languages, became an international cult classic, and stayed in print for nearly twenty years." "Now, Machines, Who Think is back, along with an extended Afterword that brings the field up to date in the last quarter century, including its scientific and its public faces. McCorduck shows how, from a slightly dubious fringe science, artificial intelligence has moved slowly (though not always steadily) to a central place in our everyday lives, and how it will be even more crucial as the World Wide Web moves into its next generation."--Jacket.