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Dragonwriter: A Tribute to Anne McCaffrey and Pern
By David Brin, Lois Mcmaster Bujold, Elizabeth Moon, Mercedes Lackey, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Todd Mccaffrey, Michael Whelan. 2013
When Anne McCaffrey passed in November 2011, it was not only those closest to her who mourned her death; legions…
of readers also felt the loss deeply. The pioneering science fiction author behind the Dragonriders of Pern® series crafted intricate stories, enthralling worlds, and strong heroines that profoundly impacted the science fiction community and genre.In Dragonwriter, Anne's son and Pern writer Todd McCaffrey collects memories and stories about the beloved author, along with insights into her writing and legacy, from those who knew her best. Nebula Award-winner Elizabeth Moon relates the lessons she learned from Pern's Lessa (and from Lessa's creator); Hugo Award-winner David Brin recalls Anne's steadfast belief that the world to come will be better than the one before; legendary SFF artist Michael Whelan shares (and tells stories about) never-before-published Pern sketches from his archives; and more.Join Anne's co-writers, fellow science fiction authors, family, and friends in remembering her life, and exploring how her mind and pen shaped not only the Weyrs of Pern, but also the literary landscape as we know it.Contributors include: Angelina Adams David Brin David Gerrold John Goodwin Janis Ian Alec Johnson Georgeanne Kennedy Mercedes Lackey Sharon Lee and Steve Miller Lois McMaster Bujold Elizabeth Moon Charlotte Moore Robert Neilson Jody Lynn Nye and Bill Fawcett Robin Roberts Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Wen Spencer Michael Whelan Richard J. Woods Chelsea Quinn YarbroThe Pleasant Nights - Volume 2
By Don Beecher. 2012
Renowned today for his contribution to the rise of the modern European fairy tale, Giovan Francesco Straparola (c. 1480-c. 1557)…
is particularly known for his dazzling anthology The Pleasant Nights. Originally published in Venice in 1550 and 1553, this collection features seventy-three folk stories, fables, jests, and pseudo-histories, including nine tales we might now designate for 'mature readers' and seventeen proto-fairy tales. Nearly all of these stories, including classics such as 'Puss in Boots,' made their first ever appearance in this collection; together, the tales comprise one of the most varied and engaging Renaissance miscellanies ever produced. Its appeal sustained it through twenty-six editions in the first sixty years.This full critical edition of The Pleasant Nights presents these stories in English for the first time in over a century. The text takes its inspiration from the celebrated Waters translation, which is entirely revised here to render it both more faithful to the original and more sparkishly idiomatic than ever before. The stories are accompanied by a rich sampling of illustrations, including originals from nineteenth-century English and French versions of the text.As a comprehensive critical and historical edition, these volumes contain far more information on the stories than can be found in any existing studies, literary histories, or Italian editions of the work. Donald Beecher provides a lengthy introduction discussing Straparola as an author, the nature of fairy tales and their passage through oral culture, and how this phenomenon provides a new reservoir of stories for literary adaptation. Moreover, the stories all feature extensive commentaries analysing not only their themes but also their fascinating provenances, drawing on thousands of analogue tales going back to ancient Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic stories.Immensely entertaining and readable, The Pleasant Nights will appeal to anyone interested in fairy tales, ancient stories, and folk creations. Such readers will also enjoy Beecher's academically solid and erudite commentaries, which unfold in a manner as light and amusing as the stories themselves.The Judas Rose
By Suzette Haden Elgin, Julie Vedder. 1987
An instant cult classic, and groundbreaking forerunner to Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale. Native Tongue Trilogy revealed to its audiences…
a frightening future world where the women of Earth are once again property.In Volume II of the trilogy, the women have at last decided to spread the language using the Roman Catholic church. But when a handful of priests discover the plot, they move to stamp it out with their own female agent, Sister Miriam Rose. But Sister Miriam has plans of her own. . . .J. G. Ballard: Visions and Revisions
By Jeannette Baxter, Rowland Wymer. 2012
Providing an extensive reassessment of dominant and recurring themes in Ballard's writing, including historical violence, pornography, post 9/11 politics, and…
urban space, this book also engages with Ballard's 'late' modernism; his experimentation with style and form; and his sustained interests in psychology and psychopathology.Apocalypse in Contemporary Japanese Science Fiction
By Motoko Tanaka. 2014
Starting with the history of apocalyptic tradition in the West and focusing on modern Japanese apocalyptic science fiction in manga,…
anime, and novels, Motoko Tanaka shows how science fiction reflected and coped with the devastation in Japanese national identity after 1945.Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights
By Marina Warner. 2011
Our foremost theorist of myth, fairytales, and folktales explores the magical realm of the imagination where carpets fly, objects speak,…
dreams reveal hidden truths, and genies grant prophetic wishes. Stranger Magic examines the wondrous tales of the Arabian Nights, their profound impact on the West, and the progressive exoticization of magic since the eighteenth century, when the first European translations appeared. The Nights seized European readers’ imaginations during the siècle des Lumières, inspiring imitations, spoofs, turqueries, extravaganzas, pantomimes, and mauresque tastes in dress and furniture. Writers from Voltaire to Goethe to Borges, filmmakers from Raoul Walsh on, and countless authors of children’s books have adapted its stories. What gives these tales their enduring power to bring pleasure to readers and audiences? Their appeal, Marina Warner suggests, lies in how the stories’ magic stimulates the creative activity of the imagination. Their popularity during the Enlightenment was no accident: dreams, projections, and fantasies are essential to making the leap beyond the frontiers of accepted knowledge into new scientific and literary spheres. The magical tradition, so long disavowed by Western rationality, underlies modernity’s most characteristic developments, including the charmed states of brand-name luxury goods, paper money, and psychoanalytic dream interpretation. In Warner’s hands, the Nights reveal the underappreciated cultural exchanges between East and West, Islam and Christianity, and cast light on the magical underpinnings of contemporary experience, where mythical principles, as distinct from religious belief, enjoy growing acceptance. These tales meet the need for enchantment, in the safe guise of oriental costume.Liminal Lives: Imagining the Human at the Frontiers of Biomedicine
By Susan Merrill Squier. 2004
Embryo adoptions, stem cells capable of transforming into any cell in the human body, intra- and inter-species organ transplantation--these and…
other biomedical advances have unsettled ideas of what it means to be human, of when life begins and ends. In the first study to consider the cultural impact of the medical transformation of the entire human life span, Susan Merrill Squier argues that fiction--particularly science fiction--serves as a space where worries about ethically and socially charged scientific procedures are worked through. Indeed, she demonstrates that in many instances fiction has anticipated and paved the way for far-reaching biomedical changes. Squier uses the anthropological concept of liminality--the state of being on the threshold of change, no longer one thing yet not quite another--to explore how, from the early twentieth century forward, fiction and science together have altered not only the concept of the human being but the contours of human life. Drawing on archival materials of twentieth-century biology; little-known works of fiction and science fiction; and twentieth- and twenty-first century U. S. and U. K. government reports by the National Institutes of Health, the Parliamentary Advisory Group on the Ethics of Xenotransplantation, and the President's Council on Bioethics, she examines a number of biomedical changes as each was portrayed by scientists, social scientists, and authors of fiction and poetry. Among the scientific developments she considers are the cultured cell, the hybrid embryo, the engineered intrauterine fetus, the child treated with human growth hormone, the process of organ transplantation, and the elderly person rejuvenated by hormone replacement therapy or other artificial means. Squier shows that in the midst of new phenomena such as these, literature helps us imagine new ways of living. It allows us to reflect on the possibilities and perils of our liminal lives.The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen (The Annotated Books)
By Hans Christian Andersen, Maria Tatar, Julie K. Allen. 2008
A richly entertaining and informative collection of Hans Christian Andersen's stories, annotated by one of America's leading folklore scholars. In…
her most ambitious annotated work to date, Maria Tatar celebrates the stories told by Denmark's "perfect wizard" and re-envisions Hans Christian Andersen as a writer who casts his spell on both children and adults. Andersen's most beloved tales, such as "The Emperor's New Clothes," "The Ugly Duckling," and "The Little Mermaid," are now joined by "The Shadow" and "Story of a Mother," mature stories that reveal his literary range and depth. Tatar captures the tales' unrivaled dramatic and visual power, showing exactly how Andersen became one of the world's ten most translated authors, along with Shakespeare, Dickens, and Marx. Lushly illustrated with more than one hundred fifty rare images, many in full color, by artists such as Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac, The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen will captivate readers with annotations that explore the rich social and cultural dimensions of the nineteenth century and construct a compelling portrait of a writer whose stories still fascinate us today.Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk & Postmodern Science Fiction
By Larry Mccaffery. 1991
The term "cyberpunk" entered the literary landscape in 1984 to describe William Gibson's pathbreaking novel Neuromancer. Cyberpunks are now among…
the shock troops of postmodernism, Larry McCaffery argues in Storming the Reality Studio, marshalling the resources of a fragmentary culture to create a startling new form. Artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, multinational machinations, frenetic bursts of prose, collisions of style, celebrations of texture: although emerging largely from science fiction, these features of cyberpunk writing are, as this volume makes clear, integrally related to the aims and innovations of the literary avant-garde.By bringing together original fiction by well-known contemporary writers (William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Kathy Acker, J. G. Ballard, Samuel R. Delany), critical commentary by some of the major theorists of postmodern art and culture (Jacques Derrida, Fredric Jameson, Timothy Leary, Jean-François Lyotard), and work by major practitioners of cyberpunk (William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, John Shirley, Pat Cadigan, Bruce Sterling), Storming the Reality Studio reveals a fascinating ongoing dialog in contemporary culture.What emerges most strikingly from the colloquy is a shared preoccupation with the force of technology in shaping modern life. It is precisely this concern, according to McCaffery, that has put science fiction, typically the province of technological art, at the forefront of creative explorations of our unique age. A rich opporunity for reading across genres, this anthology offers a new perspective on the evolution of postmodern culture and ultimately shows how deeply technological developments have influenced our vision and our art. Selected Fiction contributors: Kathy Acker, J. G. Ballard, William S. Burroughs, Pat Cadigan, Samuel R. Delany, Don DeLillo, William Gibson, Harold Jaffe, Richard Kadrey, Marc Laidlaw, Mark Leyner, Joseph McElroy, Misha, Ted Mooney, Thomas Pynchon, Rudy Rucker, Lucius Shepard, Lewis Shiner, John Shirley, Bruce Sterling, William VollmanSelected Non-Fiction contributors: Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Joan Gordon, Veronica Hollinger, Fredric Jameson, Arthur Kroker and David Cook, Timothy Leary, Jean-François Lyotard, Larry McCaffery, Brian McHale, Dave Porush, Bruce Sterling, Darko Suvin, Takayuki TatsumiNative Tongue
By Suzette Haden Elgin, Susan Squier. 1984
Called "fascinating" by the New York Times upon its first publication in 1984, Native Tongue won wide critical praise and…
cult status, and has often been compared to the futurist fiction of Margaret Atwood. Set in the twenty-second century, the novel tells of a world where women are once again property, denied civil rights and banned from public life. Earth's wealth depends on interplanetary commerce with alien races, and linguists ---a small, clannish group of families ---have become the ruling elite by controlling all interplanetary communication. Their women are used to breed perfect translators for all the galaxies' languages.Nazareth Chornyak, the most talented linguist of the family, is exhausted by her constant work translating for trade organizations, supervising the children's language education, running the compound, and caring for the elderly men. She longs to retire to the Barren House, where women past childbearing age knit, chat, and wait to die. What Nazareth comes to discover is that a slow revolution is going on in the Barren Houses: there, word by word, women are creating a language of their own to free them from men's control."Native Tongue brings to life not only the possibility of a women's language, but a rationale for one,"--Village Voice"Elgin takes up more than linguistics, of course--everything from religion to sex...the story is absolutely compelling."--Women's Review of BooksSuzette Haden Elgin is author of twelve science fiction novels and is widely know for her best-selling series The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense and for The Grandmother Principles. She is director of the Ozark Center for Language Studies and is professor emerita of linguistics at San Diego State University.Susan Squier is Julia Brill professor of English and Women's Studies at Pennsylvania State University.The Bear and, His Sons: Masculinity in Spanish and Mexican Folktales
By James M. Taggart. 1997
James Taggart contrasts how two men-a Spaniard and an Aztec-speaking Mexican-tell such tales as "The Bear's Son. " He explores…
how their stories present different ways of being a man in their respective cultures. He also focuses on how fathers reproduce different forms of masculinity in their sons, showing how fathers who care for their infant sons teach them a relational masculinity based on a connected view of human relationships.What Fire Cannot Burn
By John Ridley. 2006
The bestselling author of "Those Who Walk in Darkness" delivers the second book of his action-packed series, featuring top LAPD…
mutant-hunter Soledad O'Roark, who teams up with rival Eddi Aoki when a vigilante starts killing metanormals without mercy. Original.What Fire Cannot Burn
By John Ridley. 2006
The bestselling author of "Those Who Walk in Darkness" delivers the second book of his action-packed series, featuring top LAPD…
mutant-hunter Soledad O'Roark, who teams up with rival Eddi Aoki when a vigilante starts killing metanormals without mercy. Original.Skin Folk
By Nalo Hopkinson. 2001
Throughout the Caribbean there are stories about people who aren't what they seem. Skin gives these folk their human shape.…
When the skin comes off, their true selves emerge. And whatever the burden their skin bears, once they remove it, skin folk can fly...Nalo Hopkinson has gained universal acclaim as one of the most impressively original authors to emerge in years. Her debut novel, "Brown Girl in the Ring," won the "Locus" Award for Best First Novel, became a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award, and garnered Hopkinson the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her second novel, "Midnight Robber," was a "New York Times" Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for both the Nebula and Hugo Awards.Now she presents "Skin Folk," a richly vibrant collection of short fiction that ranges from Trinidad to Toronto, from fantastic folklore to frightening futures, from houses of deadly haunts to realms of dark sexuality. Powerful and sensual, disturbing and triumphant, these tales explore the surface of modern existence... and delve under the skin of eternal legends.John Brunner
By Jad Smith. 2012
Under his own name and numerous pseudonyms, John Brunner (1934-1995) was one of the most prolific and influential science fiction…
authors of the late twentieth century. During his exemplary career, the British author wrote with a stamina matched by only a few other great science fiction writers and with a literary quality of even fewer, importing modernist techniques into his novels and stories and probing every major theme of his generation: robotics, racism, drugs, space exploration, technological warfare, and ecology. In this first intensive review of Brunner's life and works, Jad Smith carefully demonstrates how Brunner's much-neglected early fiction laid the foundation for his classic Stand on Zanzibar and other major works such as The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Rider. Making extensive use of Brunner's letters, columns, speeches, and interviews published in fanzines, Smith approaches Brunner in the context of markets and trends that affected many writers of the time, including Brunner's uneasy association with the "New Wave" of science fiction in the 1960s and '70s. This landmark study shows how Brunner's attempts to cross-fertilize the American pulp tradition with British scientific romance complicated the distinctions between genre and mainstream fiction and between hard and soft science fiction and helped carve out space for emerging modes such as cyberpunk, slipstream, and biopunk.Cyborgs in Latin America
By J. Andrew Brown. 2010
A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via the OAPEN Library platform, www. oapen.…
org . Cyborgs in Latin America explores the ways cultural expression in Latin America has grappled with the changing relationships between technology and human identity.Smart Pop Preview 2013: Standalone Essays and Exclusive Extras on the Hunger Games, Ender's Game, Percy Jackson, the Mortal Instruments, Munchkin, the Dragonriders of Pern, and More
By David Brin, Orson Scott Card, Neal Shusterman, Kami Garcia, Michael Whelan, J Voelkel. 2013
Get a sneak peak at Smart Pop's 2013 titles with this preview volume of standalone essays and exclusive book extras!Volume…
includes:"Anne McCaffrey, Believer in Us" - David BrinFrom Dragonwriter: A Tribute to Anne McCaffrey and Pern, edited by Todd McCaffreyExclusive Extra: "Painting the Dragonwriter Cover" - Michael WhelanExcerpts from "Munchkin: Hollywood" - Liam McIntyreFrom The Munchkin Book: The Official Companion, edited by James Lowder"Percy Jackson and the Gods of Death" - J&P VoelkelFrom Demigods and Monsters: Your Favorite Authors on Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians, edited by Rick Riordan"Why the Best Friend Never Gets the Girl" - Kami GarciaFrom Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader, edited by Cassandra Clare"The Price of Our Inheritance" - Neal ShustermanFrom Ender's World: Fresh Perspectives on the SF Classic Ender's Game, edited by Orson Scott CardExclusive Extra: Q&A with Orson Scott Card"The Architects of the Rebellion" - V. ArrowFrom The Panem Companion: An Unofficial Guide to Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games, From Mellark Bakery to MockingjaysExclusive Extras:"A Grosser Power" - Ned Vizzini"Capitol or Katniss - Who Am I?" - Lili WilkinsonFrom the special e-book only content for The Girl Who Was on Fire - Movie Edition, edited by Leah Wilson"A Prehistory of Fanfiction" - Anne JamisonFrom Fic: Why Fanfiction is Taking Over the WorldExcerpts on Washington Commons, The Foundry, and AndrewAndrewFrom The Unofficial Girls Guide to New York: Inside the Cafes, Clubs, and Neighborhoods of HBO's GirlsSmart Pop Preview 2013
By David Brin, Orson Scott Card, Neal Shusterman, Kami Garcia, Michael Whelan, J Voelkel. 2013
Get a sneak peak at Smart Pop's 2013 titles with this preview volume of standalone essays and exclusive book extras!Volume…
includes:"Anne McCaffrey, Believer in Us" - David BrinFrom Dragonwriter: A Tribute to Anne McCaffrey and Pern, edited by Todd McCaffreyExclusive Extra: "Painting the Dragonwriter Cover" - Michael WhelanExcerpts from "Munchkin: Hollywood" - Liam McIntyreFrom The Munchkin Book: The Official Companion, edited by James Lowder"Percy Jackson and the Gods of Death" - J&P VoelkelFrom Demigods and Monsters: Your Favorite Authors on Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians, edited by Rick Riordan"Why the Best Friend Never Gets the Girl" - Kami GarciaFrom Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader, edited by Cassandra Clare"The Price of Our Inheritance" - Neal ShustermanFrom Ender's World: Fresh Perspectives on the SF Classic Ender's Game, edited by Orson Scott CardExclusive Extra: Q&A with Orson Scott Card"The Architects of the Rebellion" - V. ArrowFrom The Panem Companion: An Unofficial Guide to Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games, From Mellark Bakery to MockingjaysExclusive Extras:"A Grosser Power" - Ned Vizzini"Capitol or Katniss - Who Am I?" - Lili WilkinsonFrom the special e-book only content for The Girl Who Was on Fire - Movie Edition, edited by Leah Wilson"A Prehistory of Fanfiction" - Anne JamisonFrom Fic: Why Fanfiction is Taking Over the WorldExcerpts on Washington Commons, The Foundry, and AndrewAndrewFrom The Unofficial Girls Guide to New York: Inside the Cafes, Clubs, and Neighborhoods of HBO's GirlsSmart Pop Preview 2013
By David Brin, Orson Scott Card, Neal Shusterman, Kami Garcia, Michael Whelan, J Voelkel. 2013
Get a sneak peak at Smart Pop's 2013 titles with this preview volume of standalone essays and exclusive book extras!Volume…
includes:"Anne McCaffrey, Believer in Us" - David BrinFrom Dragonwriter: A Tribute to Anne McCaffrey and Pern, edited by Todd McCaffreyExclusive Extra: "Painting the Dragonwriter Cover" - Michael WhelanExcerpts from "Munchkin: Hollywood" - Liam McIntyreFrom The Munchkin Book: The Official Companion, edited by James Lowder"Percy Jackson and the Gods of Death" - J&P VoelkelFrom Demigods and Monsters: Your Favorite Authors on Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians, edited by Rick Riordan"Why the Best Friend Never Gets the Girl" - Kami GarciaFrom Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader, edited by Cassandra Clare"The Price of Our Inheritance" - Neal ShustermanFrom Ender's World: Fresh Perspectives on the SF Classic Ender's Game, edited by Orson Scott CardExclusive Extra: Q&A with Orson Scott Card"The Architects of the Rebellion" - V. ArrowFrom The Panem Companion: An Unofficial Guide to Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games, From Mellark Bakery to MockingjaysExclusive Extras:"A Grosser Power" - Ned Vizzini"Capitol or Katniss - Who Am I?" - Lili WilkinsonFrom the special e-book only content for The Girl Who Was on Fire - Movie Edition, edited by Leah Wilson"A Prehistory of Fanfiction" - Anne JamisonFrom Fic: Why Fanfiction is Taking Over the WorldExcerpts on Washington Commons, The Foundry, and AndrewAndrewFrom The Unofficial Girls Guide to New York: Inside the Cafes, Clubs, and Neighborhoods of HBO's GirlsThe Zebonites’ Stronghold
By Kenneth Tucker. 2018
They came to decadent America, tottering toward insurrection: The Zebonites, beings from a distant star had promised astounding medical and…
scientific advances in exchange for allowing them to set up a military stronghold in Florida's Everglades. Excited by their promises humanity's advancementof, Joe Tanner applied for and was hired for the contact team, a small group of individuals who could gain access to and lead other into the Zebonite's stronghold. But the Zebonites kept themselves shrouded in mystery, not revealing their natures, communicating only through the Zugs, mutated servants, and robotic bugs. Soon the world learned that the alliance had not been a request, but an ultimatum. The Zebonites, moreover, the treated human beings with contempt, considering themselves superior. They sought to instill dread by torturing, killing, and, if necessary, destroying the minds of those who oppose them...