Distress

It is the year 2055 and the battle of the sexes has seven combatants rather than two. "The illusion of empathy" has been dispensed with, and a few idealistic souls try to create a Utopia with pirated technology. But a wired journalist, Andrew Worth, doesn't want any part of the pop-'Frankenscience' regularly dished out to the masses. To get the real sbacksy, he goes to Stateless to cover the Einstein Centenary Conference where academic science is ready to reveal the ultimate breakthrough.

The year 2006 marked the centenary of the birth of Nobel-Prize winning playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett. To commemorate the occasion, this collection brings together twenty-three leading international Beckett scholars from ten countries, who take on the centenary challenge of "revolving it all": that is, going "back to Beckett"-the title of an earlier study by critic Ruby Cohn, to whom the book is dedicated-in order to rethink traditional readings and theories; provide new contexts and associations; and reassess his impact on the modern imagination and legacy to future generations.