Download or read book The History of Science Fiction written by A. Roberts and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-11-28 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The History of Science Fiction traces the origin and development of science fiction from Ancient Greece up to the present day. The author is both an academic literary critic and acclaimed creative writer of the genre. Written in lively, accessible prose it is specifically designed to bridge the worlds of academic criticism and SF fandom.

Download or read book Space Opera written by Catherynne M. Valente and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2019 HUGO AWARD FINALIST, BEST NOVEL The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy meets the joy and glamour of Eurovision in bestselling author Catherynne M. Valente's science fiction spectacle, where sentient races compete for glory in a galactic musical contest…and the stakes are as high as the fate of planet Earth. A century ago, the Sentience Wars tore the galaxy apart and nearly ended the entire concept of intelligent space-faring life. In the aftermath, a curious tradition was invented—something to cheer up everyone who was left and bring the shattered worlds together in the spirit of peace, unity, and understanding. Once every cycle, the great galactic civilizations gather for the Metagalactic Grand Prix—part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past. Species far and wide compete in feats of song, dance and/or whatever facsimile of these can be performed by various creatures who may or may not possess, in the traditional sense, feet, mouths, larynxes, or faces. And if a new species should wish to be counted among the high and the mighty, if a new planet has produced some savage group of animals, machines, or algae that claim to be, against all odds, sentient? Well, then they will have to compete. And if they fail? Sudden extermination for their entire species. This year, though, humankind has discovered the enormous universe. And while they expected to discover a grand drama of diplomacy, gunships, wormholes, and stoic councils of aliens, they have instead found glitter, lipstick, and electric guitars. Mankind will not get to fight for its destiny—they must sing. Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes have been chosen to represent their planet on the greatest stage in the galaxy. And the fate of Earth lies in their ability to rock.

Download or read book Ray Bradbury Unbound written by Jonathan R. Eller and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Ray Bradbury Unbound, Jonathan R. Eller continues the story begun in his acclaimed Becoming Ray Bradbury, following the beloved author's evolution from a short story master to a multi-media creative force and outspoken visionary. At the height of his powers as a poetic prose stylist, Bradbury shifted his creative attention to film and television, where new successes gave him an enduring platform as a compelling cultural commentator. His passionate advocacy validated the U.S. space program's mission, extending his pivotal role as a chronicler of human values in an age of technological wonders. Informed by many years of interviews with Bradbury as well as an unprecedented access to personal papers and private collections, Ray Bradbury Unbound provides the definitive portrait of how a legendary American author helped shape his times.

Download or read book Dracula Unbound written by Brian W. Aldiss and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a brilliant reimagining of Bram Stoker’s horror classic, an inventor travels back in time to save humankind from a nightmarish enslavement by vampires Joe Bodenland has figured out how to manipulate time—a discovery that leads him to Utah and an impossible sixty-five-million-year-old human gravesite. It is here that he learns of the existence of a monstrous race of intelligent predators as old as the dinosaur, and of the remarkable “train” the undead creatures use to travel back and forth from a Paleolithic past to a monstrous far future in which Homo sapiens are enslaved cattle. With the fate of all humanity at stake, Joe commandeers the ghostly transportation and rides it back to Victorian England, where he enlists the aid of a powerful ally, the author Bram Stoker, in the battle to secure Earth. But to prevent the coming apocalyptic nightmare, they must first confront and destroy the most cunning and deadly being the world has ever known: Lord Dracula, the immortal vampire. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, including multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards and the Prix Jules Verne, Grand Master Brian W. Aldiss puts a bold new science ficion spin on Bram Stoker’s classic tale of vampiric horror. An ingenious reinvention of the Nosferatu myth, Dracula Unbound is a breakneck thrill ride from one of the most revered names in science fiction and fantasy.

Download or read book Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos written by H. P. Lovecraft and published by Del Rey. This book was released on 2011-10-12 with total page 728 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." --H. P. LOVECRAFT, "Supernatural Horror in Literature" Howard Phillips Lovecraft forever changed the face of horror, fantasy, and science fiction with a remarkable series of stories as influential as the works of Poe, Tolkien, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. His chilling mythology established a gateway between the known universe and an ancient dimension of otherworldly terror, whose unspeakable denizens and monstrous landscapes--dread Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, the Plateau of Leng, the Mountains of Madness--have earned him a permanent place in the history of the macabre. In Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, a pantheon of horror and fantasy's finest authors pay tribute to the master of the macabre with a collection of original stories set in the fearsome Lovecraft tradition: ¸ The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: The slumbering monster-gods return to the world of mortals. ¸ Notebook Found in a Deserted House by Robert Bloch: A lone farmboy chronicles his last stand against a hungering backwoods evil. ¸ Cold Print by Ramsey Campbell: An avid reader of forbidden books finds a treasure trove of deadly volumes--available for a bloodcurdling price. ¸ The Freshman by Philip José Farmer: A student of the black arts receives an education in horror at notorious Miskatonic University. PLUS EIGHTEEN MORE SPINE-TINGLING TALES!

Download or read book Becoming Ray Bradbury written by Jonathan R. Eller and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2011-08-10 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Becoming Ray Bradbury chronicles the making of an iconic American writer by exploring Ray Bradbury's childhood and early years of his long life in fiction, film, television, radio, and theater. Jonathan R. Eller measures the impact of the authors, artists, illustrators, and filmmakers who stimulated Bradbury's imagination throughout his first three decades. Unprecedented access to Bradbury's personal papers and other private collections provides insight into his emerging talent through his unpublished correspondence, his rare but often insightful notes on writing, and his interactions with those who mentored him during those early years. Beginning with his childhood in Waukegan, Illinois, and Los Angeles, this biography follows Bradbury's development from avid reader to maturing author, making a living writing for the genre pulps and mainstream magazines. Eller illuminates the sources of Bradbury's growing interest in the human mind, the human condition, and the ambiguities of life and death--themes that became increasingly apparent in his early fiction. Bradbury's correspondence documents his frustrating encounters with the major trade publishing houses and his earliest unpublished reflections on the nature of authorship. Eller traces the sources of Bradbury's very conscious decisions, following the sudden success of The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man, to voice controversial political statements in his fiction. Eller also elucidates the complex creative motivations that yielded Fahrenheit 451. Becoming Ray Bradbury reveals Bradbury's emotional world as it matured through his explorations of cinema and art, his interactions with agents and editors, his reading discoveries, and the invaluable reading suggestions of older writers. These largely unexplored elements of his life pave the way to a deeper understanding of his more public achievements, providing a biography of the mind, the story of Bradbury's self-education and the emerging sense of authorship at the heart of his boundless creativity.

Download or read book Paladin Unbound written by Jeffrey Speight and published by Literary Wanderlust. This book was released on 2021-07 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last of a dying breed, a holy warrior must rise up against a growing darkness in Evelium. The most unlikely of heroes, a lowly itinerant mercenary, Umhra the Peacebreaker is shunned by society for his mongrel half-Orc blood. Desperate to find work for himself and his band of fighters, Umhra agrees to help solve a rash of mysterious disappearances, but uncovers a larger, more insidious plot to overthrow the natural order of Evelium in the process. As Umhra journeys into the depths of Telsidor's Keep to search for the missing people, he confronts an ancient evil and, after suffering a great loss, turns to the god he disavowed for help. Compelled to save the kingdom he loves, can he defeat the enemy while protecting his true identity, or must he risk everything?

Download or read book Unbound written by Dean King and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2010-03-24 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In October 1934, the Chinese Communist Army found itself facing annihilation, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Nationalist soldiers. Rather than surrender, 86,000 Communists embarked on an epic flight to safety. Only thirty were women. Their trek would eventually cover 4,000 miles over 370 days. Under enemy fire they crossed highland awamps, climbed Tibetan peaks, scrambled over chain bridges, and trudged through the sands of the western deserts. Fewer than 10,000 of them would survive, but remarkably all of the women would live to tell the tale. Unbound is an amazing story of love, friendship, and survival written by a new master of adventure narrative.

Download or read book Frankenstein Unbound written by Brian W. Aldiss and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A disruption of time and space sends a modern man back two hundred years to confront Dr. Frankenstein’s immortal monster in this brilliant reinvention of Mary Shelley’s classic tale Some years into the twenty-first century, a newly devised weapon of mass destruction will do far worse than kill; it will disrupt time and space. Suddenly, land, buildings, animals, and people are falling through “timeslips” and being transported briefly back to earlier eras. One of these inadvertent time travelers, Joe Bodenland, is shocked when he finds himself parked outside a villa on the shore of Lake Geneva—and soon after, unbelievably, in the presence of nineteenth-century literary luminaries Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, along with Shelley’s very enticing fiancée, budding author Mary. But when Joe comes face to face with a real, flesh-and-blood Victor Frankenstein and the monster the mad doctor brought into this world, the visitor from the future realizes that not only has time been disrupted, reality itself has been transmogrified. And this Frankenstein, it seems, is far from finished with his unholy endeavors, leaving it up to Joe to make it right for the sake of history—and for the bewitching lady novelist who has stolen his heart—before he is rudely thrust back to his own time. An absolutely stunning reinvention of a cherished literary classic, Frankenstein Unbound proves once more that there are no limits to the unparalleled creative genius of science fiction Grand Master W. Brian Aldiss, one of the most revered names in the field of speculative fiction.

Download or read book News from Gardenia written by Robert Llewellyn and published by Unbound Publishing. This book was released on 2012-03-23 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Gavin Meckler's light aircraft encounters a mysterious cloud and crashes to earth, he discovers that the eerily quiet landscape in which he has landed is 200 years older than the one from which he took off. In this gentle, peaceful, sustainable new world, it is possible to travel from one side of the globe to the other in a matter of minutes without burning fuel, and everyone is a gardener because that's how they can be sure to eat. Inspired by William Morris's utopian novel News from Nowhere, Robert Llewellyn shows us a future where we don't burn anything to make anything else and which isn't hovering on the brink of disaster; where aliens haven't invaded, meteors haven’t hit and zombies haven’t taken over. In short, a world where humanity eventually gets it right. All the technology described in the novel has seen the light of day in reality. Llewellyn's future isn't perfect and may not be very likely, but it is entirely possible.

Download or read book So You Had To Build A Time Machine written by Jason Offutt and published by CamCat Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Skid doesn’t believe in ghosts or time travel or any of that nonsense. A circus runaway-turned-bouncer, she believes in hard work, self-defense, and good strong coffee. Then one day an annoying theoretical physicist named Dave pops into the seat next to her at her least favorite Kansas City bar and disappears into thin air when she punches him (he totally deserved it). Now, street names are changing, Skid’s favorite muffins are swapping frosting flavors, Dave keeps reappearing in odd places like the old Sanderson murder house—and that’s only the start of her problems. Something has gone wrong. Terribly wrong. Absolutely &#*$&ed up. Someone has the nastiest versions of every conceivable reality at their fingertips, and they're not afraid to smash them together. With the help of a smooth-talking haunted house owner and a linebacker-sized Dungeons and Dragons-loving baker, Skid and Dave set out to save the world from whatever scientific experiment has sent them all dimension-hopping against their will. It probably means the world is screwed.

Download or read book Phoenix Unbound written by Grace Draven and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this USA Today bestselling novel, a woman with power over fire and illusion and the enslaved son of a chieftain battle a corrupt empire in this powerful and deeply emotional romantic fantasy. Every year, each village is required to send a young woman to the Empire's capital--her fate to be burned alive for the entertainment of the masses. For the last five years, one small village's tithe has been the same woman. Gilene's sacrifice protects all the other young women of her village, and her secret to staying alive lies with the magic only she possesses. But this year is different. Azarion, the Empire's most famous gladiator, has somehow seen through her illusion--and is set on blackmailing Gilene into using her abilities to help him escape his life of slavery. Unknown to Gilene, he also wants to reclaim the birthright of his clan. To protect her family and village, she will abandon everything to return to the Empire--and burn once more.

Download or read book UnBound written by Neal Shusterman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-12-13 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Find out what happens to Connor, Risa, and Lev now that they've finally destroyed the Proactive Citizenry in this collection of short stories set in the world of the New York Times bestselling Unwind Dystology by Neal Shusterman. Connor Lassiter's fight to bring down Proactive Citizenry and find a suitable alternative to unwinding concluded in UnDivided. Now Connor, Risa, and Lev are free to live in a peaceful future--or are they? Neal Shusterman brings back his beloved Unwind characters for his fans to see what's left for those who were destined to be unwound.

Download or read book Lightless written by C.A. Higgins and published by Del Rey. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BUZZFEED AND KIRKUS REVIEWS • With deeply moving human drama, nail-biting suspense—and bold speculation informed by a degree in physics—C. A. Higgins spins a riveting science fiction debut guaranteed to catapult readers beyond their expectations. Serving aboard the Ananke, an experimental military spacecraft launched by the ruthless organization that rules Earth and its solar system, computer scientist Althea has established an intense emotional bond—not with any of her crewmates, but with the ship’s electronic systems, which speak more deeply to her analytical mind than human feelings do. But when a pair of fugitive terrorists gain access to the Ananke, Althea must draw upon her heart and soul for the strength to defend her beloved ship. While one of the saboteurs remains at large somewhere on board, his captured partner—the enigmatic Ivan—may prove to be more dangerous. The perversely fascinating criminal whose silver tongue is his most effective weapon has long evaded the authorities’ most relentless surveillance—and kept the truth about his methods and motives well hidden. As the ship’s systems begin to malfunction and the claustrophobic atmosphere is increasingly poisoned by distrust and suspicion, it falls to Althea to penetrate the prisoner’s layers of intrigue and deception before all is lost. But when the true nature of Ivan’s mission is exposed, it will change Althea forever—if it doesn’t kill her first. Praise for Lightless “Gripping . . . sci-fi flavored with a hint of thriller.”—New York Daily News “[A] measured, lovely science-fiction debut [that is] more psychological thriller . . . contained, disciplined, tense . . . The plot is compulsive. . . . Lightless is the first of a planned series, and you can’t help looking forward to learning what’s next.”—The New York Times “Lightless is full of suspense and fun as hell to read.”—BuzzFeed “Absolutely brilliant . . . This is science fiction as it is meant to be done: scientific concepts wedded to and built upon human ideals.”—Seanan McGuire, New York Times bestselling author of the October Daye series “The stakes in this story are high—life and death, rebellion and betrayal—and debut novelist Higgins continually ratchets up the tension. . . . A suspenseful, emotional story that asks plenty of big questions about identity and freedom, this is a debut not to be missed.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A taut, suspenseful read.”—Tech Times “Lightless is an exercise in lighting a very slow fuse and building the tension to an unbearable pitch while making us guess just how apocalyptic the ultimate explosion will be. . . . It is a high-wire act, a wonderment, and a fine accomplishment from a name we’ll be seeing again.”—Sci Fi

Download or read book Through a Forest of Stars written by David C Jeffrey and published by Silvanus Books. This book was released on 2017-05 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Year: 2217. Earth's biosphere is dying, Mars' terraforming projects are in ruin, and even the discovery of voidoids--eerie neo-quantum portals into nearby star systems--has failed to yield any other Earth-like worlds in Bound Space ... until now. Terra Corporation's discovery of Silvanus, a pristine forest world, seemingly in perfect balance, should be a cause for rejoicing. But instead, humanity is on the brink of a catastrophic war over its possession.

Download or read book Writing Sci Fi and Fantasy Lit Starts written by San Francisco Writers' Grotto and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2022-07-05 with total page 61 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book of writing prompts from the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, authors of the best-selling 642 Things series Focus on a single aspect of the craft of writing with help from the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. Writing Sci-Fi and Fantasy starts with a foreword by author Dorothy Hearst, who offers pointers for writing speculative fiction and inventing fantastic new worlds. The rest of the book consists of prompts and space to think, providing opportunities to consider the rules that govern your imagined universe. Among other ideas, you’ll explore the various aspects of world-building by: writing a timeline of the history of your imagined place describing what the inhabitants of your world look like detailing transportation from city to city or planet to planet figuring out who’s in charge and whether or not they should be Take to a café, on vacation, or on your morning commute and practice your creative writing a little bit at a time. Special Features Advice from a published writer, followed by prompts Part of the Lit Start series, a collection of single-subject writing prompt books by the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto Check out the other books in this series: Writing Action, Writing Character, Writing Dialogue, Writing Humor, and Memoir.

Download or read book Science Fiction and Organization written by Matthew Higgins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-08-29 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science fiction can be seen as a diagnosis of the present, and a vision of possible futures. It therefore provides an excellent resource with which to interrogate both contemporary organizing processes and organizations as institutions. The marginal activity of science fiction has, however, been largely ignored in writing on organization theory. This international collection is the first book of its kind to explore how science fiction can enrich studies of organization by drawing on perspectives across the arts and social sciences.