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Fantasy: The 101 Best Books
By Michael Moorcock, James Cawthorn. 2016
Fantasy is one of the most appealing and yet most puzzling of literary genres. Appealing because it can offer dreams,…
the fulfillment of wishes, and escape; but puzzling because it spans such a wide and diverse range of books. In Fantasy: The 100 Best Books, James Cawthorn and Michael Moorcock present a wide-ranging cross-section of the fantasy genre, from its eighteenth century Gothic origins through nineteenth century literary classics, pulp-era weird fiction, and on to modern favorites. Recognized classics are accompanied by lesser-known works ripe for rediscovery, resulting in an interestingly idiosyncratic and uniquely valuable guide to two-and-a-half centuries of fantastic stories.The American Shore
By Samuel R. Delany. 1978
In the course of his considerations, Samuel R. Delany poses a theory of discourse and explores how the reading of…
various rhetorical turns, some science fictional, some not, is shifted by science fictional understanding.Science-Fiction Handbook
By L. Sprague DeCamp, Catherine Crook DeCamp. 1975
Copy from the 1975 Owlswick Press print edition:L. Sprague de Camp's original Science-Fiction Handbook, published in 1953 and long out…
of print, has been favourably remembered by a whole generation of science fiction readers and aspiring writers. Over the years, at convention after convention, fans have urged its reissue. Teachers of courses on imaginative fiction have begged for the book; one planned to reproduce the manual for his creative writing course until he learned that the material was under copyright Because of this enduring interest, the present book came into being.Completely rewritten by de Camp and his wife Catherine, Science Fiction Handbook, Revised serves two purposes. It introduces the general reader to the fascinating field of imaginative fiction. The first two chapters describe the growth of science fiction from Aristophanes to Asimov and give the history of its parent literature, fantasy, which is as old as cavemen and as young as tomorrow.The rest of the book affords the apprentice writer an overview of the pleasures and problems of writing imaginative fiction an teachers him the many and varied skills such writing requires. There are chapters on setting the scene, plotting the story and writing dialogue. Other chapters are devoted to showing the creative writer how to sore his literary works, keep records for tax purposes, market a story, deal with editors and agents, read the fine print in contracts and bargain with publishers. Finally, there are helpful hints for the successful writer about relating to his community, handling publicity and melding the needs of the creative artists with those of a successful human being and family member.In short, here is a wealth of information on the techniques of writing fiction. Here, too, is the wisdom distilled by the de Camps in the course of their long writing careers. And, for those who have no desire to write, here is a chance to see what the writer's world is really like and to learn something about the remarkable literature that we call science fiction and fantasy.Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels
By David Pringle. 1985
Pringle presents his selections in chronological order and includes a synopsis of the story, a discussion of the author's overall…
contribution to fantasy literature, critical commentary on the title's significance, and a brief publishing history. An introductory essay tackles the difficulty of defining fantasy, while a "Brief Bibliography" directs readers to other discussions of the genre. By no means a definitive subject guide, this entertaining volume should serve as a solid introduction to the elusive field of imaginative literature.Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels
By David Pringle. 1998
From one of the best-known editors in modern science fiction, this lively and authoritative guide will appeal to both newcomers…
and connoisseurs of the genre alike. Informative and readable, David Pringle's choices focus on landmark works by the likes of Ray Bradbury, Alfred Bester and J.G. Ballard, unearth less prominent talents such as Ian Watson, Octavia Butler and Joanna Russ, and highlight breakthrough novels by William Gibson and Philip K. Dick. An essential guide to science fiction literature.Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord Of The Rings
By Lin Carter. 1969
Lin Carter introduces readers to Tolkien's epic trilogy then takes them on a scholarly yet populist journey through the massive…
web of myths and legends that Tolkien drew on for both imagery and themes during his life's work. Carter's book places Tolkien's trilogy in the context of world mythology and legend and is a tribute to Tolkiens power of assimilation and original vision. It is the ideal introduction to the background of the LORD OF THE RINGS for the legions of new fans.Dragons, Elves and Heroes
By Lin Carter. 1969
There is magic in the grand old tales that have survived through centuries of time. Even the names of the…
books have a ring that sets the blood pounding - THE VOLSUNG SAGA, THE SHAH-NAMAH, THE MABINOGIAN. From all over the world, from all periods of ancient time, the great myths and heroic tales thunder down through the ages. Each country, each region has its legends. Somewhere, sometime, somehow, some often unknown scribe has set the tales down in permanent form.In this volume, Lin Carter has gathered together samplings from this richest of all sources of adult fantasy and although their original names may sometimes be anonymous, there surely has never been such a pride of taletellers together at one time as we have in DRAGONS, ELVES AND HEROES.The Natural Way of Things: 'The Handmaid's Tale for our age' (Economist)
By Charlotte Wood. 2015
'Savage: think Atwood in the outback' Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train'An unforgettable reading experience' Liane Moriarty,…
author of Big Little Lies'Ferocious... recalls the early Elena Ferrante' NPR'A masterpiece' Guardian'Devastating' EconomistShe hears her own thick voice deep inside her ears when she says, 'I need to know where I am.'The man stands there, tall and narrow, hand still on the doorknob, surprised.He says, almost in sympathy, 'Oh, sweetie. You need to know what you are.'"Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in a brokendownproperty in the middle of a desert.Strangers to each other, they have no idea where they are or how they came to be therewith eight other girls, their heads shaved, guarded by two inept yet vicious jailers.Doing hard labour under a sweltering sun, the prisoners soon learn what links them: ineach girl's past is a sexual scandal with a powerful man.They pray for rescue but as the hours turn into days and the days into weeks and months,it becomes clear only the girls can rescue themselves. Winner, 2016 Stella PrizeWinner, 2016 Indie Book of the Year AwardWinner, Fiction Book of the Year, 2016 Indie Book AwardWinner, 2016 Prime Minister's Literary Award for FictionWinner, Reader's Choice, 2016 ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year Shortlisted, 2016 Miles Franklin Literary AwardShortlisted, 2016 ABA Nielsen BookData Booksellers Choice AwardLonglisted, 2017 International Dublin Literary AwardGreat Short Novels of Adult Fantasy Vol 2
By Lin Carter. 1973
An anthology of short fantasy fiction, with editorial commentary for each story by Lin Carter, containing: George Macdonald - The…
Woman in the Mirror (1858)Robert W. Chambers - The Repairer of Reputations (1895)Ernest Bramah - The Transmutation of Ling (1900)Eden Phillpotts - The Lavender Dragon (1923)Golden Cities, Far
By Lin Carter. 1970
A rich and joyous collection of tales of myth, magic and necromancy, by authors ancient and modern - all the…
way from the anonymous chronicler of perhaps the oldest of written fantasies - the Sumarian Angalta Kigalshe - to Anatole France and his Merrie Tales of Jacques Tournebroche. Here you will find extracts from the Egyptian Book of Thoth, from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso from Voltaire, Alfred Noyes, and many more - a veritable feast of fantasy.Discoveries in Fantasy
By Lin Carter. 1972
An anthology of fantasy short stories, edited by American writer Lin Carter, containing:"The Vision of Yin" (Ernest Bramah, from The…
Wallet of Kai Lung)"The Dragon of Chang Tao" (Ernest Bramah, from Kai Lung's Golden Hours)"The Bird with the Golden Beak" (Donald Corley, from The Haunted Jester)"The Song of the Tombelaine" (Donald Corley, from The House of Lost Identity)"The Poet of Panopolis" (Richard Garnett, from The Twilight of the Gods and Other Tales)"The City of Philosophers" (Richard Garnett, from The Twilight of the Gods and Other Tales)"The Miniature" (Eden Phillpotts)Those Who Walk in Darkness
By John Ridley. 2003
Extreme Fabulations: Science Fictions of Life
By Steven Shaviro. 2021
An examination of science fiction narratives and the light they shed on human life, the unknowable future, and the vagaries…
of unforeseeable change.With this book, Steven Shaviro offers a thought experiment. He discusses a number of science fiction narratives: three novels, one novella, three short stories, and one musical concept album. Shaviro not only analyzes these works in detail but also uses them to ask questions about human, and more generally, biological life: about its stubborn insistence and yet fragility; about the possibilities and perils of seeking to control it; about the aesthetic and social dimensions of human existence, in relation to the nonhuman; and about the ethical value of human life under conditions of extreme oppression and devastation. Shaviro pursues these questions through the medium of science fiction because this form of storytelling offers us a unique way of grappling with issues that deeply and unavoidably concern us but that are intractable to rational argumentation or to empirical verification. The future is unavoidably vague and multifarious; it stubbornly resists our efforts to know it in advance, let alone to guide it or circumscribe it. But science fiction takes up this very vagueness and indeterminacy and renders it into the form of a self-consciously fictional narrative. It gives us characters who experience, and respond to, the vagaries of unforeseeable change.Stay
By John Clute. 2014
Stay gathers together 100,000 words of reviews, plus short fiction by John Clute, and was originally published to coincide with…
Loncon3 (the 2014 World Science Fiction Convention) at which he was one of the Guests of Honour.Also included is a complete reprint of the text of The Darkening Garden.Look at the Evidence
By John Clute. 1996
For more than 50 years John Clute has been reviewing science fiction and fantasy. Look at the Evidence is a…
collection of reviews from a wide variety of sources - including Interzone, the New York Review of Science Fiction, and Science Fiction Weekly - about the most significant literatures of the twenty-first century: science fiction, fantasy and horror: the literatures Clute argues should be recognized as the central modes of fantastika in our times. It covers the period between 1987 and 1992.Pardon This Intrusion
By John Clute. 2011
Pardon This Intrusion gathers together 47 pieces by John Clute, some written as long ago as 1985, though most are…
recent. The addresses and essays in Part One, "Fantastika in the World Storm", all written in the twenty-first century, reflect upon the dynamic relationship between fantastika - an umbrella term Clute uses to describe science fiction, horror and fantasy - and the world we live in now. Of these pieces, "Next", a contemporary response to 9/11, has not been revised; everything else in Part One has been reworked, sometimes extensively. Parts Two, Three and Four include essays and author studies and introductions to particular works; as they are mostly recent, Clute has felt free to rework them where necessary. The few early pieces - including "Lunch with AJ and the WOMBATS", a response to the Scientology scandal at the Brighton WorldCon in 1987 - are unchanged.Scores
By John Clute. 2003
For more than 50 years John Clute has been reviewing science fiction and fantasy. As Scores demonstrates, his devotion to…
the task of understanding the central literatures of our era has not slackened. There are jokes in Scores, and curses, and tirades, and apologies, and riffs; but every word of every review, in the end, is about how we understand the stories we tell about the world. Following on from his two previous books of collected reviews (Strokes and Look at the Evidence) this book collects reviews from a wide variety of sources, but mostly from Interzone, the New York Review of Science Fiction, and Science Fiction Weekly. Where it has seemed possible to do so without distorting contemporary responses to books, these reviews have been revised, sometimes extensively. 125 review articles, over 200 books reviewed in more than 214,000 words.Strokes
By John Clute. 1988
For more than 50 years John Clute has been reviewing science fiction and fantasy. Strokes is a collection of reviews…
from a wide variety of sources - including Interzone, the New York Review of Science Fiction, and Science Fiction Weekly - about the most significant literatures of the twenty-first century: science fiction, fantasy and horror: the literatures Clute argues should be recognized as the central modes of fantastika in our times. It covers the period between 1966 and 1986.Love Beyond Body, Space, And Time: An Indigenous LGBT Sci-Fi Anthology
By David Robertson, Hope Nicholson, Cherie Dimaline, Gwen Benaway, Richard Camp, Jeffrey Veregge, Nathan Adler, Daniel Justice, Cleo Keahna, Mari Kurisato, Darcie Badger. 2016
Puppies in space! Cyborg escapes! Rockabilly girls with spider-magic! Benevolent aliens! Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time is a…
collection of Indigenous science fiction and urban fantasy focusing on LGBT and Two-Spirit characters. These stories range from a transgender woman undergoing an experimental transition process to young lovers separated through decades and meeting in their own far future. These are stories of machines and magic, love and self-love. Featuring Governor General award-winning authors David Alexander Robertson and Cherie Dimaline.Enter The Expanse to explore questions of the meaning of human life, the concept of justice, and the nature of…
humanity, featuring a foreword from author James S.A. Corey The Expanse and Philosophy investigates the philosophical universe of the critically acclaimed television show and Hugo Award-winning series of novels. Original essays by a diverse international panel of experts illuminate how essential philosophical concepts relate to the meticulously crafted world of The Expanse, engaging with topics such as transhumanism, belief, culture, environmental ethics, identity, colonialism, diaspora, racism, reality, and rhetoric. Conceiving a near-future solar system colonized by humanity, The Expanse provokes a multitude of moral, ethical, and philosophical queries: Are Martians, Outer Planets inhabitants, and Earthers different races? Is Marco Inaros a terrorist? Can people who look and sound different, like Earthers and Belters, ever peacefully co-exist? Should science be subject to moral rules? Who is sovereign in space? What is the relationship between human progress and aggression? The Expanse and Philosophy helps you answer these questions—and many more. Covers the first six novels in The Expanse series and five seasons of the television adaptation Addresses the philosophical issues that emerge from socio-economics and geopolitics of Earth, Mars, and the Outer Planets Alliance Offers fresh perspectives on the themes, characters, and storylines of The Expanse Explores the connections between The Expanse and thinkers such as Aristotle, Kant, Locke, Hannah Arendt, Wittgenstein, Descartes, and Nietzsche Part of the popular Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series, The Expanse and Philosophy is a must-have companion for avid readers of James S.A. Corey’s novels and devotees of the television series alike.