Download or read book Totalitopia written by John Crowley and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2017-07-01 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Crowley's all-new essay “Totalitopia” is a wry how-to guide for building utopias out of the leftovers of modern science fiction. “This Is Our Town,” written especially for this volume, is a warm, witty, and wonderfully moving story about angels, cousins, and natural disasters based on a parochial school third-grade reader. One of Crowley’s hard-to-find masterpieces, “Gone” is a Kafkaesque science fiction adventure about an alien invasion that includes door-to-door leafleting and yard work. Perhaps the most entertaining of Crowley's “Easy Chair” columns in Harper's, “Everything That Rises” explores the fractal interface between Russian spiritualism and quantum singularities—with a nod to both Columbus and Flannery O'Connor. “And Go Like This” creeps in from Datlow's Year's Best, the Wild Turkey of horror anthologies. Plus: There's a bibliography, an author bio, and of course our Outspoken Interview, the usual cage fight between candor and common sense.

Download or read book Earth Sky Gods and Mortals written by Jay B. McDaniel and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2009-08-01 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this innovative volume, Jay McDaniel creatively weaves various strands of contemporary theology into a vibrant pattern for an ecological spirituality. Influenced by process theology, the author synthesizes core insights of feminism, liberation theology, creation theology, and world religions. He focuses this varied knowledge around the central theme of an ecologically sound and nurturing faith. The work is strengthened by provocative study questions, an insightful appendix on the role of silence in ecological spirituality, and a comprehensive, annotated bibliography.

Download or read book City Made of Words written by Paul Park and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2019-06-01 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul Park is one of modern fiction’s major innovators. With exotic settings and characters truly alien and disturbingly normal, his novels and stories explore the shifting interface between traditional narrative and luminous dream, all in the service of a deeper humanism. “Climate Change,” original to this volume, is an intimate and erotic take on a global environmental crisis. “A Resistance to Theory” chronicles the passionate (and bloody) competition between the armed adherents of postmodern literary schools. “A Conversation with the Author” gives readers a harrowing look behind the curtains of an MFA program. In “A Brief History of SF” a fan encounters the ruined man who first glimpsed the ruined cities of Mars. “Creative Nonfiction” showcases a professor’s eager collaboration with a student intent on wrecking his career. The only nonfiction piece, “A Homily for Good Friday,” was delivered to a stunned congregation at a New England church. Plus: Our candid and colorful Outspoken Interview with one of today’s most accomplished and least conventional authors, in which personal truth is evaded, engaged, and altered, all in one shot.

Download or read book Ka written by John Crowley and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Ka is a beautiful, often dreamlike late masterpiece.” —Los Angeles Times “One of our country’s absolutely finest novelists.” —Peter Straub, New York Times bestselling author of Interior Darkness and Ghost Story From award-winning author John Crowley comes an exquisite fantasy novel about a man who tells the story of a crow named Dar Oakley and his impossible lives and deaths in the land of Ka. A Crow alone is no Crow. Dar Oakley—the first Crow in all of history with a name of his own—was born two thousand years ago. When a man learns his language, Dar finally gets the chance to tell his story. He begins his tale as a young man, and how he went down to the human underworld and got hold of the immortality meant for humans, long before Julius Caesar came into the Celtic lands; how he sailed West to America with the Irish monks searching for the Paradise of the Saints; and how he continuously went down into the land of the dead and returned. Through his adventures in Ka, the realm of Crows, and around the world, he found secrets that could change the humans’ entire way of life—and now may be the time to finally reveal them.

Download or read book The Atheist in the Attic written by Samuel R. Delany and published by Outspoken Authors. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The title novella, 'The Atheist in the Attic,' appearing here in book form for the first time, is a suspenseful and vivid historical narrative, recreating the top-secret meeting between the mathematical genius Leibniz and the philosopher Spinoza caught between the horrors of the cannibalistic Dutch Rampjaar and the brilliant 'big bang' of the Enlightenment. Also featuring: a bibliography, an author biography, and our candid, uncompromising, and customary Outspoken Interview.

Download or read book Planetbreaker s Son written by Nick Mamatas and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Upending and recombining familiar genres with fearless abandon, Nick Mamatas is known for his wicked satires in which Horror rides shotgun with SF as they power through Fantasy’s rush-hour traffic. Lanes are crossed, speed limits exceeded, and minds often blown. Our title piece, original to this volume, is something entirely new. Trust me. “The Planetbreaker’s Son” is a starship novella in which interstellar emigrants maintain their stadium-sized vessel with dreams and play. On the fly. Think Pinocchio meets Ender’s Game. “Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring” is a cautionary tale about the perilous interface between ancient wizardry and modern ringtones. And it’s for you. “The Term Paper Artist” is Nick’s celebrated and hilarious how-to on embellishing the academic establishment with equal parts imitation and duct tape. Based on a true story of lies. And Featuring: of course, our casually candid Outspoken Interview, in which Greek sailors, Japanese manga mavens, Doc Martens, Lovecraft, Grandma, and Kerouac mingle and mix. Care to dance?

Download or read book The First Law of Thermodynamics written by James Patrick Kelly and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Patrick Kelly is known for finding the future unnervingly nearby, and he enters with his deep empathy and dry humor at the ready. A longtime favorite of SF readers is at the top of his game here. In the title story, a college acid trip becomes a window into an unexpected and apparently unavoidable future. In “Itsy Bitsy Spider” a disappointed woman’s robotic girlhood takes her by the hand and leads her back to the destiny that eluded her. Two short plays render alien invasion terrifyingly mundane and death annoyingly impermanent. “The Best Christmas Ever” is celebrated by sims and droids instead of the usual jolly elves. Our Outspoken Interview and a bibliography round out this long-awaited new collection.

Download or read book Beatrix Gates written by Rachel Pollack and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2019-02-01 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rachel Pollack is a sorceress, a wizard with words who spins together the spiritual, the political, and the passionate in her unique, indeed inimitable, tales. An award-winning SF and Fantasy author, she is also an esteemed Tarot Grand Master with devotees and students around the world. A progressive voice in the transgender community and a trusted guide to the ancient traditions of shamanism, she writes of shimmering and dangerous worlds that have never been imagined before—much less explored. Her queer cult favorite “The Beatrix Gates” draws on magic realism, quantum science, memoir, and myth to tell the story of a girl born not in the wrong body but in the wrong universe. Plus… “Trans Central Station,” written especially for this volume, is Pollack’s personal and penetrating take on the transgender experience then and now—and tomorrow? “Burning Beard” is a fiercely revisionist Old Testament tale of plague and prophecy told through a postmodern prose of, shall we say, many colors. “The Woman Who Didn’t Come Back” is about just what it says it’s about. And Featuring: Our Outspoken Interview, which tells us all about comics history, the automotive origins of Tarot, the benefits of Nerd celebrity, and why the Sun exists. It will be on the test.

Download or read book Thoreau s Microscope written by Michael Blumlein and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2018-07-01 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The innovative novels and stories of Michael Blumlein, MD, have introduced new levels of both terror and wonder into the fiction of scientific speculation. His work as a medical researcher and internist at San Francisco’s UCSF Medical Center informs his tales of biotech, epigenetics, brain science, and what it means to be truly if only temporarily human. Our title piece, “Thoreau’s Microscope,” inspired by a historic High Sierra expedition with Kim Stanley Robinson and Gary Snyder and first published here, is a stunning mix of hypothesis and history, in which the author inhabits Thoreau’s final days to examine the interaction of impersonal science and personal liberation. A journey as illuminating as it is intimate. Plus… A selection of short stories with Blumlein’s signature mix of horror, “hard” science, and wicked humor. “Fidelity” coolly deconstructs adultery with the help of an exuberant tumor, an erotic cartoon, and a male malady. “Y(ou)r Q(ua)ntifi(e)d S(el)f” will reset your Fitbit and your workout as well. “Paul and Me” is a love story writ extra-large, in which an Immortal from Fantasy comes down with a distinctly human disorder. In the chilling “Know How, Can Do” a female Frankenstein brings romance to life in the cold light of the lab. And Featuring:Our overly intrusive Outspoken Interview, in which the ethics of experimental medicine, animal surgery, the poetry of prose, cult film acclaim, Charles Ludlam, Darwin, and gender dysphoria all submit to examination.

Download or read book Tales of the Turing Church Hacking religion enlightening science awakening technology written by Giulio Prisco and published by Giulio Prisco. This book was released on 2020-02-07 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores intersections of science and religion, spirituality and technology, engineering and science fiction, mind and matter, and outlines a new cosmic, transhumanist religion. Hacking religion, enlightening science, awakening technology.

Download or read book Beyond Tomorrow written by Ingo Cornils and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2020 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shows German Science Fiction's connections with utopian thought, and how it attempts Zukunftsbewältigung: coping with an uncertain but also unwritten future.

Download or read book Flint and Mirror written by John Crowley and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Crowley is generous, obsessed, fascinating, gripping. Really, I think Crowley is so good that he has left everybody else in the dust."—Peter Straub From award-winning author John Crowley comes a novel that masterfully blends history and magic in Flint and Mirror. As ancient Irish clans fought to preserve their lands and their way of life, the Queen and her generals fought to tame the wild land and make it English. Hugh O'Neill, lord of the North, dubbed Earl of Tyrone by the Queen, is a divided man: the Queen gives to Hugh her love, and her commandments, through a little mirror of obsidian which he can never discard; and the ancient peoples of Ireland arise from their underworld to make Hugh their champion, the token of their vow a chip of flint. From the masterful author of Little, Big comes an exquisite fantasy of heartbreaking proportion. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book Shopping Malls and Public Space in Modern China written by Nicholas Jewell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China’s rise as an economic superpower has been inescapable. Statistical hyperbole has been accompanied by a plethora of highly publicized architectural forms that brand the regeneration of its increasingly globalized urban centres. Despite the sizeable body of literature that has accompanied China’s modernization, the essence and trajectory of its contemporary cityscape remains difficult to grasp. This volume addresses a less explored aspect of China’s urban rejuvenation - the prominence of the shopping mall as a keystone of its public spaces. Here, the presence of the built form most representative of Western capitalism’s excess is one that makes explicit the tensions between China’s Communist state and its ascent within the ’free’ market. This book examines how these interrelationships are manifested in the culturally hybrid built form of the shopping mall and its role in contesting the ’public’ space of the modern Chinese city. By viewing these interrelationships as collisions of global and local narratives, a more nuanced understanding of the shopping mall typology is explored. Much architectural criticism has failed to address the levels of meaning implicit within the shopping mall, yet it is a building type whose public popularity has guaranteed its endurance. Consequently, if architecture is to remain a relevant social art, a more holistic understanding of this phenomenon will be indispensable to the process of adapting to globalizing forces. This examination of Chinese shopping malls offers a timely and relevant case study of what is happening in all our cities today.

Download or read book Talk like a Man written by Nisi Shawl and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2019-11-15 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nisi Shawl’s steampunk-flavored alternate history of the “Belgian” Congo, Everfair, has taken the science fiction and fantasy world by storm. No surprise there. Their swift, sure, and savvy short stories had already established them as a cutting-edge Afrofuturist icon whose politically charged fiction is in the grand feminist tradition of Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and Suzy McKee Charnas. In these previously uncollected stories, Shawl explores the unexpected possibilities and perils opened up by SF&F’s new intersectionality. In Shawl’s side-slippery world, sex can be both commerce and worship, complete with ancient rites, altars, and ointments (“Women of the Doll”); a virtual reality high school is a proving ground for girlpacks and their unfortunate adversaries (“Walk like a Man”); and a British rock singer finds an image in a mirror that reflects both future hits and ancient horrors (“Something More”). Also included is a presentation at a southern university, in which they patiently (and gleefully) deconstructs the academic and arcane intersections between ancient rites and modern tech. Ifa, anyone? Plus: Our Outspoken Interview with Shawl, in which unapologetics are proffered, riddles are unraveled, and icons are, as always, clasted.

Download or read book The Collapsing Frontier written by Jonathan Lethem and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2024-03-19 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Having stormed mainstream literature from the outskirts, Lethem has won a readership both wide and deep, all of whom appreciate his literary excellence, his mordant but compassionate humor, and the cultish attentiveness of his SF origins. He has earned the right to tread anywhere, and his many admirers are ready to follow. This collection compiles his intensely personal thoughts on the most interesting and deplorable topics in post-postmodern America. It moves from original new fiction to insights on popular culture, cult and canonical authors, and problematic people. Plus… “David Bowman and the Furry-Girl School of American Fiction” is a personal true adventure, as Lethem tries (with the help of a seeming expert) to elbow his way into literary respectability. “The Collapsing Frontier” and “In Mugwump Four” are fictions mapping ominous new realms. “Calvino’s 'Lightness' and the Feral Child of History” is an intimate encounter with a legendary author. In “My Year of Reading Lemmishly” and “Snowden in the Labyrinth” he explores courage, art, and the search for truth, with wildly different results. And Featuring: Our usual Outspoken Interview, in which Lethem reveals the secret subtext of his books, how he spent his MacArthur award money, and how a Toyota he owned was used in the robbery of a fast-food restaurant.

Download or read book Night Shift written by Eileen Gunn and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2022-08-16 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wry, dark humor burnishes visionary SF in these often prophetic, sometimes troubling, but always fascinating tales that combine and masterfully conflate the disparate worlds of corporate tech and literary art. “After the Thaw” is a hi-tech take on an ancient idea: immortality. “Terrible Trudy on the Lam” based on actual events, is a modern fable about a zoo escape, a private eye, a vaudeville act and keeping your mouth shut. “Night Shift at NanoGobblers,” written for a NASA website, is about asteroid-altering AIs and their world-weary earthbound handlers. “Transitions” deals with jet lag when your flight is decades late. Gunn’s long-awaited third collection is rounded out by incisive and affectionate portraits of her SF colleagues, mentors, and friends, beginning with Ursula Le Guin. All illuminated of course by our artfully intimate interview.

Download or read book Atheist in the Attic written by Samuel R. Delany and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2018-04-01 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The title novella, “The Atheist in the Attic,” appearing here in book form for the first time, is a suspenseful and vivid historical narrative, recreating the top-secret meeting between the mathematical genius Leibniz and the philosopher Spinoza caught between the horrors of the cannibalistic Dutch Rampjaar and the brilliant “big bang” of the Enlightenment. Plus: equal parts history, confession, complaint, gossip, and personal triumph, Delany’s “Racism and Science Fiction” combines scholarly research and personal experience in the unique true story of the first major African American author in the genre. And featuring: a bibliography, an author biography, and our candid, uncompromising, and customary Outspoken Interview.