The Bookworm's Alphabet Game.

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Parallel Universes
by Fred Alan Wolf

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard P. Feynman

Repetition
A poetic device that repeats its self over and over again.

SEMIOTICS: The study of both verbal and nonverbal signs. In Charles Sanders Peirce's thinking, a sign may fall into several possible categories:

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iconic signs bear some natural resemblance to what they signify. For instance, a map of Tennessee is an iconic representation of a "real world" geography.
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indexical signs show some causal connection with what they signify. For instance, a stylized image of smoke as a sign indicating "fire" would be an indexical sign.
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symbolic signs have an arbitrary or conventional relationship with what they signify. Note that in linguistics, almost all verbal sounds and written letters fall in the category of symbolic signs. Using the sounds /c/ and /a/ and /t/ to represent a furred quadroped that hunts mice, or the graphemes <c>, <a>, and <t> as a visual representation of those sounds, is purely arbitrary.

Typeface... where would we be without it?

[The] Uplift War by David Brin

Venus on the Half-Shell

War of The Worlds by H.G. Wells...

Xenagogy, conduction of strangers: used as the title of a guide-book.

YAHWIST TEXT (aka J Text): In biblical studies, this textual tradition contrasts with the E Text and the P Text appearing in Genesis and other parts of the Torah. As for the abbreviation "J," in German transliteration of Hebrew, the letter "J" is used for "Y." Thus, scholars today refer to the "J Text" or the Yahwist Text when they discuss a textual tradition referring to God as Yahweh or Yahweh Elohim but which never refers to God as Elohim alone.

The J Text was once thought to have been written about 999-800 BCE, but more recent scholarship suggests it should be dated after the period of exile (597, 587/586 BCE). It is written in a dialect we associated with the city of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah, the more southerly of the tribal nations. This contrasts with the E Text, in which the material is associated linguistically with the region of Ephraim and which probably dates between 799-700 BCE. These two textual traditions of the E Text and the J text probably existed independently of each other for some time, but the northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed toward the end of the eighth century. The priests of Judah seem to have incorporated the E Text into their J Text tradition after that. This resulted in occasional duplications and repetition of detail in the Pentateuch; often the same tale would be told twice, once with a northern orientation and once with a southern perspective. We can see the same phenomenon in the biblical books of Kings and Chronicles. The resulting blend, complete with more recent additions such as late foreign loanwords, late religious rituals like the Sabbath, and imagery borrowed from Mesopotamian poetry and religions, is called the "P Text" or the Priestly Document. If students are reading a study Bible like the Anchor Bible series, the editors helpfully mark which sections come from the E Text, the J Text, and the P Text. A sample of material that comes from the J Text includes the material in Genesis 1:1-2:3, which probably was actually written much later than the subsequent material in Genesis 2:4 and afterward. Click here for a more detailed discussion.

Z

A PRIORI: In rhetoric, logic, and philosophy, an argument is said to be a priori if its truth can be known or inferred independently of any direct perception. Logic, geometry, and mathematics are usually held as such (Palmer 381).

1. lit. A kind of maggot which destroys books by eating its way through the leaves.
   1855 MRS. GATTY Parables fr. Nat. Ser. XVIII. (1809) 66 The bookworm..had just eaten his way through the back of Lord Bacon's Advancement of Learning. 1886 Bookseller 6 Nov. 1180 A living specimen of a bookworm..Book-worms are the larvæ of a small beetle (anobium.).. I discovered that many of the volumes contained living bookworms.
   
2. fig. One who seems to find his chief sustenance in reading, one who is always poring over books.
   1599 B. JONSON Cynthia's Rev. III. ii, Perverted and spoiled by a whoreson book-worm. a1736 POPE Lett. Wks. 1736 V. 141, I wanted but a black gown and a salary, to be as meer a bookworm as any there. 1865 MERIVALE Rom. Emp. VIII. lxvii. 278 No sophist, no schoolman, no mere dreaming bookworm.

Chaucer, Geoffery author of Canterbury Tales

[The] Disposessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

Epilogue - A piece of writing at the end of a work of literature or drama, usually used to bring closure to the work.