The Craft Of Oblivion

The Craft of Oblivion is an innovative and groundbreaking volume that aims to study, for the first time, the intersections between forgetting and remembering in classical Chinese civilization. Oblivion has tended to be relegated to a marginal position, often conceived as the mere destructive or undesirable opposite of memory, even though it performs an essential function in our lives. Forgetting and memory, far from being autonomous and mutually exclusive spheres, should be seen as interdependent phenomena. Drawing on perspectives from history, philosophy, literature, and religion, and examining both transmitted texts and excavated materials, the contributors to this volume analyze various ways of understanding oblivion and its complex and fertile relations with memory in ancient China.

Shaara is running out of friends. The sacrifices she and Warden made two years ago bought the League time, not victory. The war against the Undying has left them exhausted, drained of everything but hope—and precious little of that. The simple fact is that the Undying are going to win. Warden knows it, Shaara knows it. The Undying sure as hell know it. Until, out of the black, the Eternal comes to Shaara with an offer she can’t refuse, however much she’d like to. The threat he warned her about two years ago is real, and now it’s come calling. It cares nothing for their little war. All life in the galaxy, Undying or not, will end if it spreads unchecked. Shaara and the Eternal have little choice but to work together to destroy it . . . At least, for now. But people on both sides aren’t happy with an alliance, however temporary. Some of them are willing to risk all that lives just for a shot at power—and revenge. If Shaara can’t find a way to defeat them, she and the few friends she has left will lose more than their lives. They’ll lose everything.

First Lieutenant Shaara was dead this morning. Her captain is furious at her. She wasted company resources getting herself killed, and it’s coming out of her paycheck. Now, she’s sitting across from the first other human being she’s seen in six years. His name is Adnan. He claims to come from Earth—but that’s impossible. Earth died a long time ago. If Adnan’s telling the truth, he and the decaying ship the captain pulled him off are nearly a thousand years old. Wherever he’s from, he’s Shaara’s responsibility now. Which is the last thing she needs. But it’s either that, or the captain sells Adnan into slavery. Shaara knows what that would mean. Most humans do. And something inside her won’t let her abandon Adnan to it: revenant memories, stabbed awake by the look in his eyes. Facing those memories won’t be easy. It’d be far easier to ignore the feeling driving her forward. Far easier to let it all go to hell, and drift back to sleep. Until a shadowy new faction starts stoking the fires of war. They’re looking for Adnan; Earth’s last survivor holds the key to unleash a terrible, indiscriminate vengeance on the galaxy that wronged them. Who they are is a mystery—to everyone but Shaara. Hard as she’s tried to forget, she knows them all too well. Which means she’s the only one who can stop them. The question is: does she want to? Maybe the galaxy’s earned a little vengeance.

Shaara never asked to be in charge. Since taking command of the mysterious AI warship Warden, and the eccentric mercenary company that calls him home, she’s only accepted jobs that let her conscience sleep at night. The trouble is, those jobs don’t pay too well. After more than a year of fighting for the downtrodden, the exploited, and the oppressed, the Wardens’ coffers are running dry. So when they get a suspicious but lucrative offer from a pariah republic on the fringe of galactic politics, Shaara ignores the warning voice in her head and accepts. Of course, the voice is right—it usually is. The contract takes the Wardens to the edges of explored space; there, in the vast darkness beyond the galactic core, a great and terrible force is gathering—a foe far deadlier than they’ve ever fought. The galaxy’s not ready to face it. Has Shaara saved them all from Gaeus Nemesis just to die another day? What’s more, this new enemy holds the key to another mystery. As they fight for their lives, Shaara and Corax are forced to ask themselves a question they hoped they’d never have to: How much do they really know about Warden? And can they trust him?

Two colonies set out from Earth. One would travel the solar system and return in fifty years. The other, by design, would never come back. The crew of the returning ship, however, finds that during its absence, it missed a rather crucial planetary event: the Apocalypse. Soon the last remaining humans--those in the second, wandering colony--are about to be thrust into a final battle for souls between the forces of good and evil. Evil is much better prepared for the fight, though. The futures of both mankind and the afterlife depend upon the actions of all the humans caught in the struggles. Even though the forces they are up against are no less powerful than deity, humans with enough willpower can sometimes do amazing things...

Magic that shouldn't exist. A secret war. The courage to save an empire. As one of the empire's most skilled soldiers, Brandt is no stranger to combat. After he and his fellow wolfblades fight a merciless warrior armed with unbelievable powers, Brandt is left shattered. Searching for answers, Brandt stumbles upon a secret war, fought by a very few, that threatens the land he calls home. Alena is a gifted student studying for university exams. She moonlights as a thief and spy, searching for a purpose beyond the walls of her small town. When she steals a powerful artifact she becomes the most wanted thief in the empire, sending her fleeing across the continent for safety. Their quest for answers uncovers lies buried for generations. Lies at the heart of their empire. As a mysterious and powerful enemy prepares their assault, Brandt and Alena must race to find the truth and save their home. Before the Gate Beyond Oblivion summons them both. The Oblivion's Gate Trilogy collects for the first time the complete epic fantasy series!

Sequel to: The ashes of tomorrow / by James Swallow.

Forgetting is usually juxtaposed with memory as its opposite in a negative way: it is seen as the loss of the ability to remember, or, ironically, as the inevitable process of distortion or dissolution that accompanies attempts to commemorate the past. The civic emphasis on the crucial importance of preserving lessons from the past to prevent us from repeating mistakes that led to violence and injustice, invoked most poignantly in the call of “Never again” from Holocaust survivors, tends to promote a view of forgetting as verging on sin or irresponsibility. In this book, Bradford Vivian hopes to put a much more positive spin on forgetting by elucidating its constitutive role in the formation and transformation of public memory. Using examples ranging from classical rhetoric to contemporary crises like 9/11, Public Forgetting demonstrates how, contrary to conventional wisdom, communities may adopt idioms of forgetting in order to create new and beneficial standards of public judgment concerning the lessons and responsibilities of their shared past.