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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 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.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.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.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...The Kip Brothers (Early Classics of Science Fiction)
By Jules Verne, Arthur B. Evans, Stanford L. Luce, Jean-Michel Margot. 2007
Castaways on a barren island in the South Seas, Karl and Pieter Kip are rescued by the brig James Cook.…
After helping to quell an onboard mutiny, however, they suddenly find themselves accused and convicted of the captain's murder. In this story, one of his last Voyages Extraordinaires, Verne interweaves an exciting exploration of the South Pacific with a tale of judicial error reminiscent of the infamous Dreyfus Affair. This Wesleyan edition brings together the first English translation with one of the first detailed critical analyses of the novel, and features all the illustrations from the original 1902 publication.The Mysterious Island: The Secret Of The Island (Early Classics of Science Fiction)
By Jules Verne. 2001
At a time when Verne is making a comeback in the US as a mainstream literary figure, Wesleyan is pleased…
to publish a new translation of one of his best-known novels, The Mysterious Island. Although several editions under the same title are in print, most reproduce a bowdlerized nineteenth-century translation which changes the names of the characters, omits several important scenes, and ideologically censors Verne's original text.The Mysterious Island was published in 1874, and it is one of Verne's longest novels. The plot depicts a group of men who have become castaways stranded on an island in the Pacific during the American Civil War. The novel describes their attempts not only to survive but also, with the aid of the scientific and technological know-how, to rebuild their world from the meager resources of the island. At the end, however, it is realized that Captain Nemo, from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, has secretly been helping the settlers. A marvelous adventure story, The Mysterious Island is also notable for its modern retelling of the utopian deserted-island myth, with repeated echoes of Robinson Crusoe and the Swiss Family Robinson. This Wesleyan edition features notes, appendices and an introduction by Verne scholar William Butcher, as well as reproductions of the illustrations from the original French edition.Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction
By Kim Stanley Robinson, Gerry Canavan. 2014
Contemporary visions of the future have been shaped by hopes and fears about the effects of human technology and global…
capitalism on the natural world. In an era of climate change, mass extinction, and oil shortage, such visions have become increasingly catastrophic, even apocalyptic. Exploring the close relationship between science fiction, ecology, and environmentalism, the essays in Green Planets consider how science fiction writers have been working through this crisis. Beginning with H. G. Wells and passing through major twentieth-century writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, Stanislaw Lem, and Thomas Disch to contemporary authors like Margaret Atwood, China Miéville, and Paolo Bacigalupi--as well as recent blockbuster films like Avatar and District 9--the essays in Green Planets consider the important place for science fiction in a culture that now seems to have a very uncertain future. The book includes an extended interview with Kim Stanley Robinson and an annotated list for further exploration of "ecological SF" and related works of fiction, nonfiction, films, television, comics, children's cartoons, anime, video games, music, and more. Contributors include Christina Alt, Brent Bellamy, Sabine Höhler, Adeline Johns-Putra, Melody Jue, Rob Latham, Andrew Milner, Timothy Morton, Eric C. Otto, Michael Page, Christopher Palmer, Gib Prettyman, Elzette Steenkamp, Imre Szeman.Shorter Views: Queer Thoughts & the Politics of the Paraliterary
By Samuel R. Delany. 1999
In Shorter Views, Hugo and Nebula award-winning author Samuel R. Delany brings his remarkable intellectual powers to bear on a…
wide range of topics. Whether he is exploring the deeply felt issues of identity, race, and sexuality, untangling the intricacies of literary theory, or the writing process itself, Delany is one of the most lucid and insightful writers of our time. These essays cluster around topics related to queer theory on the one hand, and on the other, questions concerning the paraliterary genres: science fiction, pornography, comics, and more. Readers new to Delany's work will find this collection of shorter pieces an especially good introduction, while those already familiar with his writing will appreciate having these essays between two covers for the first time.