A view on contractions of higher dimensional varieties
In this paper we discuss some recent results about extremal contractions of complex algebraic varieties. These are proper surjective maps, $ϕ: X\longrightarrow Z$, of normal varieties with connected fibers such that $X$ has mild singularities (in particular $X$ is $Q$-Gorenstein) and the anticanonical divisor of $X$ is $ϕ$ ample. It will appear on the Proceedings of AMS-SRI on Algebraic Geometry, Santa Cruz 1995.
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