The Hub

In sunny San Cicaro, a new app is dominating the city’s streets – and its people. Max loves her city, and believes everyone deserves to enjoy its hidden treasures. So when she launches the SC Hub, a new social app to connect people and places, she couldn’t be happier with its blazing overnight success. But her reclusive girlfriend, Ellie, can’t help but worry about the magnetic pull the app is having on its creator, and the strange occurrences in town that seem linked to it. Are people driving the app… or the other way round? This 7,000 word short story was originally published in 'The San Cicaro Experience' anthology by Thunderbird Studios.

Filled with local events as well as intriguing characters, this engaging account vividly captures the spirit and soul of Boston, both yesterday and today."--BOOK JACKET.

The hapless heroes of Hub Space return with new jobs, new allies, and new adventures at the heart of the galaxy, in a novel expanded and revised from stories originally appearing in Analog. Just when cynical space pilot Nashira Wing has finally started to enjoy helping David LaMacchia with his clueless quest to crack the secrets of the Hub Network, he’s hijacked by a crew of kittenish thieves and trapped in the treasure vault of a far older civilization. What he finds there gives Nashira a shot at the score of a lifetime—but changes David’s life in ways that threaten their friendship. To keep the devious masters of the Hub from getting their tentacles on Nashira’s prize, she and David must mend frayed relationships and navigate new ones, all while facing adventures in larceny, sex, bureaucracy, hyperspatial geometry, and radical body modification. Can they come through it all with their hearts, their identities, and their dignity intact?

The evolution of the Boston metropolitan area, from country villages and streetcar suburbs to exurban sprawl and “smart growth.” Boston's metropolitan landscape has been two hundred years in the making. From its proto-suburban village centers of 1800 to its far-flung, automobile-centric exurbs of today, Boston has been a national pacesetter for suburbanization. In The Hub's Metropolis, James O'Connell charts the evolution of Boston's suburban development. The city of Boston is compact and consolidated—famously, “the Hub.” Greater Boston, however, stretches over 1,736 square miles and ranks as the world's sixth largest metropolitan area. Boston suburbs began to develop after 1820, when wealthy city dwellers built country estates that were just a short carriage ride away from their homes in the city. Then, as transportation became more efficient and affordable, the map of the suburbs expanded. The Metropolitan Park Commission's park-and-parkway system, developed in the 1890s, created a template for suburbanization that represents the country's first example of regional planning. O'Connell identifies nine layers of Boston's suburban development, each of which has left its imprint on the landscape: traditional villages; country retreats; railroad suburbs; streetcar suburbs (the first electric streetcar boulevard, Beacon Street in Brookline, was designed by Frederic Law Olmsted); parkway suburbs, which emphasized public greenspace but also encouraged commuting by automobile; mill towns, with housing for workers; upscale and middle-class suburbs accessible by outer-belt highways like Route 128; exurban, McMansion-dotted sprawl; and smart growth. Still a pacesetter, Greater Boston has pioneered antisprawl initiatives that encourage compact, mixed-use development in existing neighborhoods near railroad and transit stations. O'Connell reminds us that these nine layers of suburban infrastructure are still woven into the fabric of the metropolis. Each chapter suggests sites to visit, from Waltham country estates to Cambridge triple-deckers.

THE HUB IS A VERY DANGEROUS PLACE- BUT SO ARE ITS CITIZENS. The Federation of the Hub: thousands of rough, ornery and tough-minded human worlds with only the subtlest of interstellar governments holding them all together. Stable at last after centuries of war, the Hub is now prime real estate ... making it a merciless arena for the conflicting schemes of criminals, unscrupulous corporations, and invaders from beyond the edges of Federation space. But the Hub is well-defended, and not only by professional heroes such as Telzey Amberdon and Trigger Argee. In Hub Space a citizen is expected to stand up for herself, blaster in hand, as needs must; so when Trouble comes Hubward in large doses, there are an awful lot of armed citizens waiting for it.... At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management). "Old-fashioned space opera is alive and well [in] David Weber's The Honor of the Queen. . . ." ¾Science Fiction Age "The Honor of the Queen . . . is worth shouting about. . . . I want more!" ¾Philadelphia Weekly Press "In terms of space combat, I think David Weber may be the best writer around . . . a top-notch read." ¾FosFax

A day in the life of one of the humans who workes at the hub, an alien. airport with a focus on interacting weth people of the many different species that come through.

The Rock, the Curse, and the Hub is a collection of original essays about the people and places of Boston sports that live in the minds and memories of Bostonians and all Americans. Each chapter focuses on the games and the athletes, but also on which sports have defined Boston and Bostonians.