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Are You a Cheeseburger?
By Monica Arnaldo. 2021
A Kids' Indie Next List pick! Laugh-out-loud humor and a tender friendship blossom in author-illustrator Monica Arnaldo’s charming picture book…
about a lonely raccoon and a glowing seed, and the world’s most important question: Can this seed grow cheeseburgers? Grub is a lonely racoon. Rumbling in the trash. Looking for food.Seed is, well, a seed! Patiently waiting in the trash. Hoping someone will plant it. When the two finally meet, they realize they might be able to help each other! Grub has just one big question first: What will Seed grow? Could Seed grow Grub’s favorite food, mouthwatering cheeseburgers? Seed isn’t sure what a cheeseburger is exactly, but . . . maybe!And so begins a hilarious friendship following two unlikely strangers learning more about the other and discovering the pressure that comes with fulfilling expectations. Author-illustrator Monica Arnaldo will leave readers giggling and clamoring for more in this charming story that celebrates the unexpected—and how the most special friendships bloom only when we are unapologetically ourselves.
TIME Star Trek: Inside the Most Influential Science Fiction Series Ever
By The Editors of TIME. 1898
Fifty years after the birth of the Star Trek phenomenon, the legacy is as alive as ever. In 2016 and…
2017, both a new film and television installation will be added to the historic franchise, totaling thirteen feature films and six television series, causing Trekkies to rejoice around the world. The Star Trek series has not only captivated our imaginations, but also our hearts as we adventure alongside Captain Kirk, Captain Picard, Spock and so many more favorite characters through galaxies and lightyears.Relive your favorite moments on this landmark anniversary in the all-new, special edition from TIME, Star Trek: Inside the Most Influential Science-Fiction Series Ever. Starring some of the most iconic characters in Hollywood history ¿ from human beings to extraterrestrials ¿ Star Trek examines how these two species work together to better understand the universe in which they live. Over the past fifty years, Star Trek has explored the future, and perhaps more importantly, the human condition, inspiring Trekkies all around the world to live long and prosper.
The Ultimate Guide to Star Trek (Entertainment Weekly Collector's Edition )
By Simon Pegg, The Editors of Entertainment Weekly. 2016
You may think you are already the ultimate Star Trek fan, but have you ever wondered how the Vulcan greeting…
came to be? Or who did (and didn't) get along behind the scenes of the USS Enterprise? Enter The Ultimate Guide to Star Trek, your personal guide to the shows, cast, crew and worlds that they explored. The Ultimate Guide to Star Trek chronologically explores the productions and fandom of Star Trek. We begin with the three-year run of the original series with stars William Shatner as Captain Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Spock. Next we lead into the six major motion pictures of the 20th century and second generation of television series. Finally, we survey the current Star Trek major motion picture franchise with stars like Chris Pine and director J.J. Abrams. This 50th anniversary collector's edition includes new photos from the upcoming Star Trek Beyond movie and opens with an introduction by the film's cowriter and Scotty 2.0, Simon Pegg.
Artificial Culture is an examination of the articulation, construction, and representation of "the artificial" in contemporary popular cultural texts, especially…
science fiction films and novels. The book argues that today we live in an artificial culture due to the deep and inextricable relationship between people, our bodies, and technology at large. While the artificial is often imagined as outside of the natural order and thus also beyond the realm of humanity, paradoxically, artificial concepts are simultaneously produced and constructed by human ideas and labor. The artificial can thus act as a boundary point against which we as a culture can measure what it means to be human. Science fiction feature films and novels, and other related media, frequently and provocatively deploy ideas of the artificial in ways which the lines between people, our bodies, spaces and culture more broadly blur and, at times, dissolve. Building on the rich foundational work on the figures of the cyborg and posthuman, this book situates the artificial in similar terms, but from a nevertheless distinctly different viewpoint. After examining ideas of the artificial as deployed in film, novels and other digital contexts, this study concludes that we are now part of an artificial culture entailing a matrix which, rather than separating minds and bodies, or humanity and the digital, reinforces the symbiotic connection between identities, bodies, and technologies.
You Must Be This Happy to Enter: Stories (Punk Planet Bks.)
By Elizabeth Crane. 2008
Whether breathlessly enthusiastic, serenely calm, or really concentrating right now on their personal zombie issues, Elizabeth Crane's happy cast explores…
the complexities behind personal satisfaction. Elizabeth Crane is the author of two previous story collections, When the Messenger is Hot and All This Heavenly Glory. Her work has also been featured in numerous publications, including Chicago Reader and The Believer, as well as several anthologies, including McSweeney's Future Dictionary of America and The Best Underground Fiction. A winner of the Chicago Public Library's 21st Century Award, Crane teaches creative writing at Northwestern's School of Continuing Studies, The School of the Art Institute, and The University of Chicago. She lives in Chicago.
Benny the Blue Whale: One Author's Descent into the Madness of AI
By Andy Stanton. 2023
AI is changing the world at frightening speed. A bestselling author decides to find out more… &‘Something profound and utterly…
brilliant is going on… hilarious.&’ THE TIMES Is ChatGPT the end of creative industries as we know them? An ethical quagmire from which there is no return? A threat to all our jobs, as we keep hearing on the news? Bestselling children&’s author Andy Stanton has made a career out of writing differently – from the unconventional &‘hero&’ of his bestselling Mr Gum series to his penchant for absurdist plots, his children&’s books are anything but formulaic. When a friend introduces him to ChatGPT, the new large language chatbot, Andy is as sceptical as he is curious. Can this jumble of algorithms really mimic the spontaneity of human thought? Could it one day replace human authors like him for good? And are we soon to be ruled over by despotic robot overlords? He decides there&’s only one thing for it – he must test this bot&’s capabilities. Eventually, he settles on a prompt that will push the algorithm to its creative limits: &‘tell me a story about a blue whale with a tiny penis.&’ Chaos ensues. What follows is a surprising and illuminating battle between Andy and ChatGPT that maybe, just maybe, might help us all understand AI a little bit better. Join Andy and his beleaguered AI lackey on a rollicking metafictional journey through the art of storytelling. Presenting his prompts and the AI-generated narrative alongside extensive commentary, Stanton provides a startling paean to the art of a good story and boundless human creativity. Hopeful and hilarious, Benny the Blue Whale provides a joyfully anarchic meditation on AI, literature and why we write. *** A WATERSTONES AND NEW SCIENTIST BEST BOOK OF 2023 &‘There&’s no book like it. Scholarly, childish, fascinating and hilarious – one of our funniest writers dissects what it takes to build a story and what that tells us about being human. It&’ll really make you think, if you can stop laughing.&’ Chris Addison, co-creator of BREEDERS &‘Entertaining and alarmingly relevant, provocative and philosophically satisfying, it&’s ultimately a profoundly human text.&’ OBSERVER &‘A magnificent experiment by a perfect fool – deep and shallow and stupid and clever – the perfect use of AI (Andy Intelligence).&’ Robin Ince, author of THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING INTERESTED &‘Benny the Blue Whale is many things. It&’s a fascinating discourse on the nature of language and storytelling. It&’s a philosophical treatise on the possibilities of artificial intelligence. It&’s a receptacle for obscenely hilarious jokes... A brilliant and beautiful cyborg: part human brain, part computational muscle. It&’s a post-post-modern work of genius.&’ Anthony McGowan, Carnegie Medal-winning author of LARK
The Multiverse as Theory in Postmodern Speculative Fictional Narratives (Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies)
By Angélica Cabrera Torrecilla, Sáez de Adana, Francisco. 2025
The Multiverse as Theory in Postmodern Speculative Fictional Narratives considers the concept of the multiverse beyond the immediacy of being…
merely an excuse or scenario for the development of stories, instead positioning the multiverse as a theoretical method in which speculative fiction narratives can explore diverse issues to bridge ideas across cultural, social, and philosophical analysis.Taking a cross-cultural approach, the book centres around the critical engagements that literary and media texts have with the representations of the multiverse, beyond considering this subject as a mere rhetorical flourish or a passing fad. A diverse and international team of authors engage with the multiverse from the point of view of “other worlds,” understanding it not as the appearance of another independent world, but as the collision of two or more different worlds into one of them. From this key finding, the multiverse encourages us to pay attention to the influence that fiction exerts on narratives and world-building, providing possible frameworks to rethink critical aspects of temporality, space, self, society, and culture in contemporary times.This pioneering work will interest students and scholars working in the areas of media and cultural studies, comparative literature, popular culture studies, speculative fiction, and transmedia studies.