Download or read book Utopic Dreams and Apocalyptic Fantasies written by Talmadge J. Wright and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2010-09-25 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few books have attempted to contextualize the importance of video game play with a critical social, cultural and political perspective that raises the question of the significance of work, pleasure, fantasy and play in the modern world. The study of why video game play is 'fun' has often been relegated to psychology, or the disciplines of cultural anthropology, literary and media studies, communications and other assorted humanistic and social science disciplines. In Utopic Dreams and Apocalyptic Fantasies, Talmadge Wright, David Embrick and Andras Lukacs invites us to move further and consider questions on appropriate methods of researching games, understanding the carnival quality of modern life, the role of marketing in altering game narratives, and the role of fantasy and desire in modern video game play. Embracing an approach that combines a cultural and/or critical studies approach with a sociological understanding of this new media moves the debate beyond simple media effects, moral panics, and industry boosterism to one of asking critical questions, what does modern video game play 'mean,' what questions should we be asking, and what can sociological research contribute to answering these questions. This collection includes works which use textual analysis, audience based research, symbolic interactionism, as well as political economic and psychoanalytic perspectives to illuminate areas of inquiry that preserves the pleasure of modern play while asking tough questions about what such pleasure means in a world divided by political, economic, cultural and social inequalities.

Download or read book After Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia written by Ellen Datlow and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2012-10-09 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If the melt-down, flood, plague, the third World War, new Ice Age, Rapture, alien invasion, clamp-down, meteor, or something else entirely hit today, what would tomorrow look like? Some of the biggest names in YA and adult literature answer that very question in this short story anthology, each story exploring the lives of teen protagonists raised in catastrophe's wake-whether set in the days after the change, or decades far in the future. New York Times bestselling authors Gregory Maguire, Garth Nix, Susan Beth Pfeffer, Carrie Ryan, Beth Revis, and Jane Yolen are among the many popular and award-winning storytellers lending their talents to this original and spellbinding anthology.

Download or read book The Next Apocalypse written by Chris Begley and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this insightful book, an underwater archaeologist and survival coach shows how understanding the collapse of civilizations can help us prepare for a troubled future. Pandemic, climate change, or war: our era is ripe with the odor of doomsday. In movies, books, and more, our imaginations run wild with visions of dreadful, abandoned cities and returning to the land in a desperate attempt at survival. In The Next Apocalypse, archaeologist Chris Begley argues that we completely misunderstand how disaster works. Examining past collapses of civilizations, such as the Maya and Rome, he argues that these breakdowns are actually less about cataclysmic destruction than they are about long processes of change. In short: it’s what happens after the initial uproar that matters. Some people abandon their homes and neighbors; others band together to start anew. As we anticipate our own fate, Begley tells us that it was communities, not lone heroes, who survived past apocalypses—and who will survive the next. Fusing archaeology, survivalism, and social criticism, The Next Apocalypse is an essential read for anxious times.

Download or read book Postapocalyptic Fantasies in Antebellum American Literature written by John Hay and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the widespread use of postapocalyptic fantasies in American literary texts in the early nineteenth century.

Download or read book The End of the World written by John Cotton and published by . This book was released on 1655 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Bloodring written by Faith Hunter and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a near future world marked by apocalyptic religious strife, Thorn St. Croix, a powerful neomage living secretly among humankind, channels her gift of stone-magery into jewelry making, until a handsome police officer, Thaddeus Bartholomew, comes into her life, changing everything. Reprint.

Download or read book Theory for the World to Come written by Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2019-04-15 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can social theories forge new paths into an uncertain future? The future has become increasingly difficult to imagine. We might be able to predict a few events, but imagining how looming disasters will coincide is simultaneously necessary and impossible. Drawing on speculative fiction and social theory, Theory for the World to Come is the beginning of a conversation about theories that move beyond nihilistic conceptions of the capitalism-caused Anthropocene and toward generative bodies of thought that provoke creative ways of thinking about the world ahead. Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer draws on such authors as Kim Stanley Robinson and Octavia Butler, and engages with afrofuturism, indigenous speculative fiction, and films from the 1970s and ’80s to help think differently about the future and its possibilities. Forerunners: Ideas First Short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead

Download or read book There Will be Dragons Second Edition written by John Ringo and published by Baen Publishing Enterprises. This book was released on 2013-05-15 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now with all new content by John Ringo! Paradise Lost In the future there is no want, no war, no disease nor ill-timed death. The world is a paradise¾and then, in a moment, it ends. The council that controls the Net falls out and goes to war. Everywhere people who have never known a moment of want or pain are left wondering how to survive. But scattered across the face of the earth are communities which have returned to the natural life of soil and small farm. In the village of Raven's Mill, Edmund Talbot, master smith and unassuming historian, finds that all the problems of the world are falling in his lap. Refugees are flooding in, bandits are roaming the woods, and his former lover and his only daughter struggle through the Fallen landscape. Enemies, new and old, gather like jackals around a wounded lion. But what the jackals do not know is that while old he may be, this lion is far from death. And hidden in the past is a mystery that has waited until this time to be revealed. You cross Edmund Talbot at your peril, for a smith is not all he once was. . . . At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management). Praise for the Science Fiction of John Ringo "MARVELOUS!" ¾David Weber "Explosive. . . . Fans of strong military SF will appreciate Ringo's lively narrative and flavorful characters. . . . One of the best new practitioners of military SF." ¾Publishers Weekly ". . . since his imagination, clearly influenced by Kipling and rock and roll, is fertile, and his storytelling skill sound, [When the Devil Dances] is irresistible." ¾Booklist ". . . fast-paced military sf peopled with three-dimensional characters and spiced with personal drama as well as tactical finesse." ¾Library Journal "If Tom Clancy were writing SF, it would read much like John Ringo . . . good reading with solid characterizations¾a rare combination." ¾Philadelphia Weekly Press "Ringo provides a textbook example of how a novel in the military SF subgenre should be written. . . . Crackerjack storytelling." ¾Starlog

Download or read book Overworld the Dragon Mage Book 1 written by Rohan M. Vider and published by . This book was released on 2020-12-28 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A magic apocalypse. Refugees from Earth. A new world. Elves, orcs, and dragons! Portals from Overworld have appeared on Earth, and beings intent on conscripting humanity into the mysterious Trials have invaded. Earth is doomed. Humanity has been exiled. Can Jamie save mankind? Jamie Sinclair, a young man with unique gifts, must find a way for his family and friends to survive Earth's destruction and build a new home in Overworld. The Trials is not a game. Will Jamie survive its challenges? Join Jamie as he struggles through the brutal Trials while wrestling with his new magics and Overworld's game-like dynamics. A fantasy post-apocalyptic survival story of one man's journey to save humanity.

Download or read book Wastelands written by John Joseph Adams and published by Start Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 527 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Famine, Death, War, and Pestilence: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the harbingers of Armageddon — these are our guides through the Wastelands... From the Book of Revelations to The Road Warrior; from A Canticle for Leibowitz to The Road, storytellers have long imagined the end of the world, weaving tales of catastrophe, chaos, and calamity. Gathering together the best post-apocalyptic literature of the last two decades from many of today’s most renowned authors of speculative fiction, including George R.R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Orson Scott Card, Carol Emshwiller, Jonathan Lethem, Octavia E. Butler, and Stephen King, Wastelands explores the scientific, psychological, and philosophical questions of what it means to remain human in the wake of Armageddon.

Download or read book Any Given Doomsday written by Lori Handeland and published by Lori Handeland. This book was released on 2014-11-18 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preventing the Apocalypse, one demon at a time . . . Elizabeth Phoenix, Liz to my friends, just an ex-cop whose psychic abilities got her partner killed. Next thing I know, I’m fighting a supernatural battle against the Nephilim, monsters of Biblical proportion, intent on bringing about doomsday. If only I didn’t have to work with the one, the only man I’ve ever loved, half-vampire Jimmy Sanducci. That relationship did not end well and I haven’t forgotten, or forgiven, him yet. With new powers I’m unable to control, I’m forced to beg help from Sawyer, a powerful Navajo shapeshifter, a man who is sex in every form. As we spiral toward Armageddon, I’m caught between two worlds and two men. Will I succeed in saving us all, or will the world as we know it end?

Download or read book The End Was Not the End written by Joshua H. Leet and published by . This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heroes prevail... usually. You sit close to a campfire, depending on its faint, flickering light to ward off the darkness. Yet the fire cannot hold back dark memories, thoughts of your fallen kingdom, of monsters across the land, of magic gone awry. Around fires like yours are seated other travelers, refugees from catastrophes none dare mention. Kings and queens huddle shoulder to shoulder with peasants, wizards share scraps with slaves, and each wishes only to be saved. Some will be lucky, for heroes yet remain in their lands. For others, hope was not among the provisions stuffed into a pack when fleeing home. Eventually the silence of the night grows too heavy, and someone speaks. They tell a tale of loss, of foolish pride and tragic mistake. With bravery stoked by company, others speak up, each sharing their own sorrows. Before long, there are enough tales to fill a volume. The conversations continue through the night, and by the time dawn has filtered through the gnarled tree limbs, journeys must continue, and one by one, the strangers trudge away. Their worlds may have ended, but they have survived another night. They will continue on, seeking to rebuild upon the ruins of great dreams. Their stories linger upon the air, drifting into time like the smoke from their extinguished fires, fed only by faint embers. This book contains eleven stories set in worlds where an apocalypse has already come, but the characters you'll read about aren't quite ready for the end.

Download or read book Badlands Born written by Wade Peterson and published by Wade Peterson. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: She tried to take the easy way out. But life after death is killer… Jasmine Shaw believed being dead would solve all her problems. But instead of reconnecting with her deceased twin brother, she wakes up in a grim desert afterlife where zombies want to munch on her brains. And no sooner does she escape that fate than she’s pursued by an indestructible psycho samurai. Harried and terrified, Jasmine teams up with an Eighties glam-rocker wannabe to navigate the unforgiving landscape and her master her emerging powers. But with a horde of flesh-eaters and the katana-wielding nutjob hot on their heels, all roads seem to lead to ruin. Will Jasmine find her sibling at the passage to Heaven, or will she be skewered by a warrior’s blade? Badlands Born is the first book in the gritty post-apocalyptic Badlands Born fantasy series. If you're a fan of The Gunslinger, World War Z and Mad Max, you've found your next read. If you like complex heroines, gruesome ghouls, and Eighties Easter eggs, you’ll flip for this page-turner. Buy Badlands Born to not die again today! Keywords: Adventure, Post-Apocalyptic, Afterlife, Dark Fantasy, magic, survival, monsters, zombies, Max Brooks, Neil Gaiman, spellbinding, magic, journey, road trip, undead hell, cannibal maniac, free, free first in series, free fantasy, action-packed, magic power, rock and roll, rock n' roll, metaphysical, portal fantasy, Badlands Cursed, Enter the Samurai

Download or read book The System Apocalypse Issue 3 A Post Apocalyptic LitRPG Comic written by Tao Wong and published by Starlit Publishing. This book was released on 2020 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Lee has made it back to civilization. But Whitehorse is very different from the sleepy small town in the Yukon he knew. At first, John tries to find a new life, but monsters abound in the apocalypse and he's drawn back into the fray. In search of survivors, John meets new aliens, potential allies and old friends. But the apocalypse is more dangerous than he knows, and it'll take everything he has to survive. The System Apocalypse comics is adapted from the best-selling System Apocalypse novels, a LitRPG science fiction and fantasy apocalyptic series written by Tao Wong.

Download or read book Doomsday Can Wait written by Lori Handeland and published by Lori Handeland. This book was released on 2015-01-06 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Werewolves? Vampires? Demons? Oh, my! Liz Phoenix here. Just a psychic ex-cop who managed to thwart Doomsday. But the army of demons intent on bringing about the Apocalypse ain’t done yet. Neither am I. I may have lost three quarters of my troops in the last battle, but with the backing of a half-vampire, a fairy and a Navajo skin-walker, three of the most powerful beings on earth, I’m in good shape. Or so I thought until the Naye'i showed up. They call her The Woman of Smoke and she’s one scary demon. The Naye'i wants me dead. But lately, who doesn't?

Download or read book Wastelands 2 More Stories of the Apocalypse written by George R. R. Martin and published by Titan Books (US, CA). This book was released on 2015-02-24 with total page 627 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ITS THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT... For decades, the apocalypse and its aftermath have yielded some of the most exciting short stories of all time. From David Brin's seminal The Postman to Hugh Howey's Deep Blood Kettle and Tananarive Due's prescient Patient Zero, the end of the world continues to thrill. This companion volume to the critically acclaimed WASTELANDS offers thirty of the finest examples of post-apocalyptic short fiction, with works by: Ann Aguirre Megan Arkenberg Paolo Bacigalupi Christopher Barzak Lauren Beukes David Brin Orson Scott Card Junot Díaz Cory Doctorow Tananarive Due Toiya Kristen Finley Milo Joe R. Lansdale George R. R. Martin Jack McDevitt Seanan McGuire Maureen F. McHugh D. Thomas Minton Rudy Rucker & Bruce Sterling Ramsey Shehadeh Robert Silverberg Award-winning editor John Joseph Adams has once again assembled a who’s who of short fiction, and the result is nothing short of mind-blowing. --- PRAISE FOR WASTELANDS: Everything that is best about the trope, from bleak, empty worlds to beacons of hope. - Booklist. The best anthology of any kind I have read to date. - Grasping for the Wind. A great collection that gets my highest recommendation.- Bookgasm

Download or read book The System Apocalypse Short Story Anthology Volume 1 written by Tao Wong and published by Starlit Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-29 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bounty hunting survivor. A Galactic dark elf. A woman who has given up her humanity to become something more. These stories and more are available in the first short story anthology for the System Apocalypse, covering year one on Earth. When the world ends, humanity steps up, finding new ways to survive in a world with Classes, magic and monsters. The anthology features exciting, new stories by five new writers and a new, never publicly released short story by Tao Wong. The System Apocalypse world was first introduced in 'Life in the North' and is a LitRPG science fiction and fantasy post-apocalyptic work that features monsters, science fiction technology, character sheets, supernatural races and ancient myths in one heady, LitRPG brew. Stories and writers featured in this anthology include: Craig Hamilton - "Hunting Monsters" has our protagonist doing what he does best. Finding those who would exploit the System and the people within. Except this time, there are even more complications than normal. Alexis Keane - "Tooth and Claw" is a heart-warming tale of friendship that knows no bounds of race or distance. Ix Phoen - "Rebel Within" tells a tale of hardship in South America, where the monsters are not always the ones outside the walls. Tao Wong – "Debts & Dances" covers the arrival of the System from the perspective of our favorite Truinnar Lord. R.K. Billiau – "Phoenix Rising" covers an unconventional hero, one whose mind is slipping from him before the apocalypse. Will the apocalypse be his salvation? Or doom? L.A. Batt - "Overture to Obliteration" brings us to far-off New Zealand to glimpse the wreckage the System has wrought.