Download or read book The Book of Speculation written by Erika Swyler and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2015-06-23 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of BuzzFeed's 24 Best Fiction Books of 2015 "As Simon, a lonely research librarian, searches frantically for the key to a curse that might be killing the women in his family, he learns strange and fascinating secrets about their past. A tale full of magic and family mystery, The Book of Speculation will keep you up all night reading."—Isaac Fitzgerald, BuzzFeed Simon Watson, a young librarian, lives alone in a house that is slowly crumbling toward the Long Island Sound. His parents are long dead. His mother, a circus mermaid who made her living by holding her breath, drowned in the very water his house overlooks. His younger sister, Enola, ran off six years ago and now reads tarot cards for a traveling carnival. One June day, an old book arrives on Simon's doorstep, sent by an antiquarian bookseller who purchased it on speculation. Fragile and water damaged, the book is a log from the owner of a traveling carnival in the 1700s, who reports strange and magical things, including the drowning death of a circus mermaid. Since then, generations of "mermaids" in Simon's family have drowned--always on July 24, which is only weeks away. As his friend Alice looks on with alarm, Simon becomes increasingly worried about his sister. Could there be a curse on Simon's family? What does it have to do with the book, and can he get to the heart of the mystery in time to save Enola? In the tradition of Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants, Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, and Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, The Book of Speculation--with two-color illustrations by the author--is Erika Swyler's moving debut novel about the power of books, family, and magic.
Download or read book The Speculative Book written by Speculative Books and published by . This book was released on 2017-06-20 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of short stories and poems gathered by Speculative Books.
Download or read book Speculative Everything written by Anthony Dunne and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-12-06 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to use design as a tool to create not only things but ideas, to speculate about possible futures. Today designers often focus on making technology easy to use, sexy, and consumable. In Speculative Everything, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby propose a kind of design that is used as a tool to create not only things but ideas. For them, design is a means of speculating about how things could be—to imagine possible futures. This is not the usual sort of predicting or forecasting, spotting trends and extrapolating; these kinds of predictions have been proven wrong, again and again. Instead, Dunne and Raby pose “what if” questions that are intended to open debate and discussion about the kind of future people want (and do not want). Speculative Everything offers a tour through an emerging cultural landscape of design ideas, ideals, and approaches. Dunne and Raby cite examples from their own design and teaching and from other projects from fine art, design, architecture, cinema, and photography. They also draw on futurology, political theory, the philosophy of technology, and literary fiction. They show us, for example, ideas for a solar kitchen restaurant; a flypaper robotic clock; a menstruation machine; a cloud-seeding truck; a phantom-limb sensation recorder; and devices for food foraging that use the tools of synthetic biology. Dunne and Raby contend that if we speculate more—about everything—reality will become more malleable. The ideas freed by speculative design increase the odds of achieving desirable futures.
Download or read book That We May Live written by Ge Yan and published by Calico. This book was released on 2020 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An approachable introduction to contemporary speculative fiction from China and Hong Kong that touches on issues of urbanization, sexuality, and propaganda"--
Download or read book Speculative Epistemologies written by John Rieder and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speculative Epistemologies is about truth effects in sf, which stands for both science fiction and speculative fiction. It examines six narratives, one from each decade from the 1960s to the 2010s, that challenge dominant assumptions about the normal, the possible, and the real. It asks what the patterns of overlap and interference generated by texts located in border territories that make their identification as sf problematic, and sometimes controversial, can reveal about the dynamics of sf's multiple subcultures (e.g. professionals, academics, and fans); the complexity of the genre's communities of practice and their routes of production, distribution, and reception; and the genre's shifting position within a broadly conceived field of literary and cultural production. The "speculative epistemologies" in these stories are counter-hegemonic ways of knowing, ways of imagining knowing differently, and the focus of this study is their effect on the formation of identities and communi...
Download or read book Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction written by P. L. Thomas and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-09-03 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did Kurt Vonnegut shun being labeled a writer of science fiction (SF)? How did Margaret Atwood and Ursula K. Le Guin find themselves in a public argument about the nature of SF? This volume explores the broad category of SF as a genre, as one that challenges readers, viewers, teachers, and scholars, and then as one that is often itself challenged (as the authors in the collection do). SF, this volume acknowledges, is an enduring argument. The collected chapters include work from teachers, scholars, artists, and a wide range of SF fans, offering a powerful and unique blend of voices to scholarship about SF as well as examinations of the place for SF in the classroom. Among the chapters, discussions focus on SF within debates for and against SF, the history of SF, the tensions related to SF and other genres, the relationship between SF and science, SF novels, SF short fiction, SF film and visual forms (including TV), SF young adult fiction, SF comic books and graphic novels, and the place of SF in contemporary public discourse. The unifying thread running through the volume, as with the series, is the role of critical literacy and pedagogy, and how SF informs both as essential elements of liberatory and democratic education.
Download or read book The Speculative City written by Susanna Phillips Newbury and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A forensic examination of the mutual relationship between art and real estate in a transforming Los Angeles Underlying every great city is a rich and vibrant culture that shapes the texture of life within. In The Speculative City, Susanna Phillips Newbury teases out how art and Los Angeles shaped one another’s evolution. She compellingly articulates how together they transformed the Southland, establishing the foundation for its contemporary art infrastructure, and explains how artists came to influence Los Angeles’s burgeoning definition as the global city of the twenty-first century. Pairing particular works of art with specific innovations in real estate development, The Speculative City reveals the connections between real estate and contemporary art as they constructed Los Angeles’s present-day cityscape. From banal parking lots to Frank Gehry’s designs for artists’ studios and museums, Newbury examines pivotal interventions by artists and architects, city officials and cultural philanthropists, concluding with an examination of how, in the wake of the 2008 global credit crisis, contemporary art emerged as a financial asset to fuel private wealth and urban gentrification. Both a history of the transformation of the Southland and a forensic examination of works of art, The Speculative City is a rich complement to the California chronicles by such writers as Rebecca Solnit and Mike Davis.
Download or read book Speculative Modernism written by William Gillard and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-11-08 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speculative modernists--that is, British and American writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror during the late 19th and early 20th centuries--successfully grappled with the same forces that would drive their better-known literary counterparts to existential despair. Building on the ideas of the 19th-century Gothic and utopian movements, these speculative writers anticipated literary Modernism and blazed alternative literary trails in science, religion, ecology and sociology. Such authors as H.G. Wells and H.P. Lovecraft gained widespread recognition--budding from them, other speculative authors published fascinating tales of individuals trapped in dystopias, of anti-society attitudes, post-apocalyptic worlds and the rapidly expanding knowledge of the limitless universe. This book documents the Gothic and utopian roots of speculative fiction and explores how these authors played a crucial role in shaping the culture of the new century with their darker, more evolved themes.
Download or read book The Black Imagination Science Fiction and the Speculative written by Sandra Jackson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book expands the discourse as well as the nature of critical commentary on science fiction, speculative fiction and futurism – literary and cinematic by Black writers. The range of topics include the following: black superheroes; issues and themes in selected works by Octavia Butler; selected work of Nalo Hopkinson; the utopian and dystopian impulse in the work of W.E. B. Du Bois and George Schuyler; Derrick Bell’s Space Traders; the Star Trek Franchise; female protagonists through the lens of race and gender in the Alien and Predator film franchises; science fiction in the Caribbean Diaspora; commentary on select African films regarding near-future narratives; as well as a science fiction/speculative literature writer’s discussion of why she writes and how. This book was published as a special issue of African Identities: An International Journal.
Download or read book The Speculative City written by Cecilia L. Chu and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2022-01-27 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Speculative City explores property speculation as a key aspect of financialization and its role in reshaping the contemporary built environment. The book offers a series of case studies that encompass a range of cities whose urban fabrics have undergone significant transformation in recent years. While the forms of these developments shared many similarities, their trajectories and social outcomes were contingent upon existing planning and policy frameworks and the historical roles assumed by the state and the private sector in housing and welfare provision. By paying close attention to the forces and actors involved in property development, this book underscores that the built environment has played an integral part in the shaping of new values and collective aspirations while facilitating the spread of financial logics in urban governance. It also shows that these dynamics represent a larger shift of politics and culture in the ongoing production of urban space and prompts reflections on future trajectories of finance-led property speculation.
Download or read book The Speculative Turn written by Levi Bryant and published by re.press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Continental philosophy has entered a new period of ferment. The long deconstructionist era was followed with a period dominated by Deleuze, which has in turn evolved into a new situation still difficult to define. However, one common thread running through the new brand of continental positions is a renewed attention to materialist and realist options in philosophy. Among the current giants of this generation, this new focus takes numerous different and opposed forms. It might be hard to find many shared positions in the writings of Badiou, DeLanda, Laruelle, Latour, Stengers, and Zizek, but what is missing from their positions is an obsession with the critique of written texts. All of them elaborate a positive ontology, despite the incompatibility of their results. Meanwhile, the new generation of continental thinkers is pushing these trends still further, as seen in currents ranging from transcendental materialism to the London-based speculative realism movement to new revivals of Derrida. As indicated by the title The Speculative Turn, the new currents of continental philosophy depart from the text-centered hermeneutic models of the past and engage in daring speculations about the nature of reality itself. This anthology assembles authors, of several generations and numerous nationalities, who will be at the center of debate in continental philosophy for decades to come.
Download or read book Writing Speculative Fiction written by Eugen Bacon and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-04-24 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this engaging and accessible guide, Eugen Bacon explores writing speculative fiction as a creative practice, drawing from her own work, and the work of other writers and theorists, to interrogate its various subgenres. Through analysis of writers such as Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien and J. K. Rowling, this book scrutinises the characteristics of speculative fiction, considers the potential of writing cross genre and covers the challenges of targeting young adults. It connects critical and cultural theories to the practice of creative writing, examining how they might apply to the process of writing speculative fiction. Both practical and critical in its evaluative gaze, it also looks at e-publishing as a promising publishing medium for speculative fiction. This is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of creative writing, looking to develop a critical awareness of, and practical skills for, the writing of speculative fiction. It is also a valuable resource for creators, commentators and consumers of contemporary speculative fiction. Chapter 8, 'Horror and the Paranormal' was shortlisted for the Australasian Horror Writers Association (AHWA)'s 2019 Australian Shadows Awards.
Download or read book Re Awakenings written by Alison Buck and published by Elsewhen Press. This book was released on 2011-11-21 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Expect a life-changing experience[Re]Awakenings are the starting points for life-changing experiences; a new plane of existence, an alternate reality or cyber-reality. This genre-spanning anthology of new speculative fiction explores that theme with a spectrum of tales, from science fiction to fantasy to paranormal; in styles from clinically serious to joyfully silly. As you read through them all, and you must read all of them, you will discover along the way that stereo-typical distinctions between the genres within speculative fiction are often arbitrary and unhelpful. You will be taken on an emotional journey through a galaxy of sparkling fiction; you will laugh, you will cry; you will consider timeless truths and contemplate eternal questions.All of life is within these pages, from birth to death (and in some cases beyond). In all of these stories, most of them specifically written for this anthology, the short format has been used to great effect. If you haven'¿¿t already heard of some of these authors, you soon will as they are undoubtedly destined to become future stars in the speculative fiction firmament. Remember, you read them here first!
Download or read book Speculative Fiction of Mark Twain written by Mark Twain and published by Courier Dover Publications. This book was released on 2018-10-17 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The great American humorist applied his celebrated wit and imagination to the spinning of these lesser-known tales about time travel, mental telepathy, instantaneous communication, alternative histories, and utopian worlds.
Download or read book The Speculative Fiction of Mark Twain written by Mark Twain and published by Courier Dover Publications. This book was released on 2018-10-10 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The great American humorist applied his celebrated wit and imagination to the spinning of these lesser-known tales about time travel, mental telepathy, instantaneous communication, alternative histories, and utopian worlds.
Download or read book Year s Best YA Speculative Fiction 2015 written by Julia Rios and published by Twelfth Planet Press. This book was released on 2016-10-12 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fans of Kaleidoscope will find more tales of wonder, adventure, diversity, and variety in this collection devoted to stories with teen protagonists. Our goal is to uncover the best young adult short fiction of the year published in the anthologies dedicated to the form, the occasional special edition of a magazine, and individual pieces appearing in otherwise “adult” anthologies and magazines, and bring them together in one accessible collection. Table of Contents Songs in the Key of You - Sarah Pinsker Blood, Ash, Braids - Genevieve Valentine Mosquito Boy - Felix Gilman The Rainbow Flame - Shveta Thakrar The Sixth Day - Sylvia Anna Hivén For Sale: Fantasy Coffin (Ababuo Need Not Apply) - Chesya Burke Kia and Gio - Daniel José Older Bucket List Found in the Locker of Maddie Price, Age 14, Written Two Weeks Before the Great Uplifting of ll Mankind - Erica L. Satifka Function A.save (target.Dawn) - Rivqa Rafael Noah No-one and the Infinity Machine - Sean Williams Forgiveness - Leah Cypess Probably Definitely - Heather Morris I'm Only Going Over - Cat Hellisen The Ways of Walls and Words - Sabrina Vourvoulias Reflections - Tamlyn Dreaver Entangled Web - E C Myers Blue Ribbon - Marissa Lingen Bodies are the Strongest Conductors - James Robert Herndon Pineapple Head - Joel Enos Grass Girl - Caroline M. Yoachim The Birds of Azalea Street - Nova Ren Suma
Download or read book Speculative Research written by Alex Wilkie and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-02-17 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is another future possible? So called ‘late modernity’ is marked by the escalating rise in and proliferation of uncertainties and unforeseen events brought about by the interplay between and patterning of social–natural, techno–scientific and political-economic developments. The future has indeed become problematic. The question of how heterogeneous actors engage futures, what intellectual and practical strategies they put into play and what the implications of such strategies are, have become key concerns of recent social and cultural research addressing a diverse range of fields of practice and experience. Exploring questions of speculation, possibilities and futures in contemporary societies, Speculative Research responds to the pressing need to not only critically account for the role of calculative logics and rationalities in managing societal futures, but to develop alternative approaches and sensibilities that take futures seriously as possibilities and that demand new habits and practices of attention, invention, and experimentation.