This title reflects upon science fiction's most famous computer and explores the relationship between science fantasy and technological fact. The informative, nontechnical chapters written especially for this book describe many of the areas of computer science critical to the design of intelligent machines, discuss whether scientists in the 1960s were accurate about the prospects for advancement in their fields, and look at how HAL has influenced scientific research.

A white woman named Miriam Vener used to be a civil rights activist, but now she lives a conventional middle-class life in Houston with her family, spending summers in an equally conventional New England town. Then her long-estranged daughter, Veronica, turns up. Veronica is of mixed race, the product of Miriam's romance with a black professor, who has raised the girl. The impact of her daughter's existence--and her color--on Miriam's world forces Miriam to reevaluate many aspects of her life--and, meanwhile, Veronica must come to terms with her resentment of the mother who abandoned her. A New York Times Notable Book for the year 2000.

Three men from Louisiana share a common, tragic destiny in Burke's first novel.

In HALF-MOON SCAR, Amy, a lesbian college professor, returns home to Iowa to try to decide if she really wants to commit to her lover, and to try to understand and overcome her tendency toward self-mutilation, a result of ambivalence about her sexual orientation. Hoping only for peace and quiet at her parents' house, Amy is shaken when she encounters an old friend, Gavin, who has become that rare being, a male anorexic, because of his guilt over his homosexuality. The similarities of their plights draw them together as they seek to come to terms with the way long-buried conflicts can so drastically affect their behavior as adults.