Hallucinations

The brain is a machine evolved to construct a picture of reality out of sensory inputs. But it's also quite good at creating realities of its own. There's no better guide to this particular trip than Oliver Sacks, a writer who has taken us on so many neuro-scientific journeys. One of our picks for Best Nonfiction of 2012.

May 25: On this day in 1938 Raymond Carver was born. Carver's poem "Luck," about a nine-year-old who wakes to an empty house and the leftovers of his parents' party, is all too autobiographical: "What luck, I thought. / Years later,…

Angry robots! Aren't they all? Well, not the line of fine science fiction and fantasy books that comes to readers under the rubric Angry Robot. In fact, their offerings…

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