Guild Telescope

After defeating the mercenary army that threatened his home, Jakar sets out with Efadora – the only person left with the power to bind him – across the Rift. He hunts the cultists who enslaved him, intent on ending their trade in elemental children, but he remembers little beyond that his search begins in the legendary city of Sulian Daw. Back in Mira, the Foundry’s rhidium – the rare mineral that grants them extraordinary power – has gone missing and is feared stolen by the rebellious faction that seeks to bring down the Sovereign. Ester, fledgling Smith of the Foundry, is tasked with tracking it down. If she fails, the Sovereign will rain death upon all those who oppose him, costing thousands of innocent lives.

Marking the anniversary of the telescope’s invention, these collected essays highlight a number of significant historical episodes concerning this well-loved instrument, which has played a crucial role in Man’s thinking about his position – literally and philosophically – in the universe.

Deals with the history of eyeglasses from their invention in Italy ca. 1286 to the appearance of the telescope three cent. later. "By the end of the 16th cent. eyeglasses were as common in western and central Europe as desktop computers are in western developed countries today." Eyeglasses served an important technological function at both the intellectual and practical level, not only easing the textual studies of scholars but also easing the work of craftsmen/small bus. During the 15th cent. two crucial developments occurred: the ability to grind convex lenses for various levels of presbyopia and the ability to grind concave lenses for the correction of myopia. As a result, eyeglasses could be made almost to prescription by the early 17th cent. Illus.

The sixth novel in Cherryh’s Foreigner space opera series, a groundbreaking tale of first contact and its consequences… It has been nearly ten years since the starship Phoenix returned to Alpha, the station orbiting the world of the atevi, which had been abandoned following a rift between a faction of the station's inhabitants and the spacers' Pilot's Guild. The unexpected return of the Phoenix has forever changed the lives of both atevi and Mospheirans, for over the ensuing decade, the captains of the Phoenix have brought both species into space. Their motivation seemed simple: Reunion Station, a human station in another sector of space, had been destroyed by aliens. But on his deathbed, the senior captain of the Phoenix admits that he lied to the crew—that Reunion was merely damaged, not destroyed, and many people may have survived. At this disclosure, the crew rebels and forces the Phoenix to undertake a rescue mission to Reunion. Onboard the rescue mission are Bren Cameron, brilliant human paidhi representing the atevi ruler Tabini-aiji, and Tabini's grandmother Ilisidi, a fearsome and ambitious atevi leader with an agenda of her own. Trapped in a distant star system with little fuel left, facing a bellicose alien ship, how can Bren help to avoid interspecies war when the notoriously secretive Pilot's Guild aboard Reunion Station refuse to cooperate, and may have kept the inhabitants of their own station ignorant of their true situation? The long-running Foreigner series can also be enjoyed by more casual genre readers in sub-trilogy installments. Explorer is the 6th Foreigner novel, and the 3rd book in the second subtrilogy.