An essential collection of proto–science fiction stories that reveals the diverse literary milieu out of which the sci fi genre emerged. A planetary escape pod, an alien body-snatcher, an underground Alaskan city, and a war between the sexes in Atlantis! These are just a few of the outré elements you'll find in More Voices from the Radium Age, a showcase of proto–science fiction edited …
A romance of the far future, in which humankind has relocated underground, where it is beset by monsters from another dimension—but love leads on. In the far future, humankind's survivors huddle below Earth's frozen surface in a pyramidal fortress-city that, for centuries now, has been under siege by loathsome “Ab-humans,” enormous slugs and spiders, and malevolent “Watching Things…
J. G. Ballard's collected nonfiction from 1962 to 2007, mapping the cultural obsessions, experiences, and insights of one of the most original minds of his generation. J. G. Ballard was a colossal figure in English literature and an imaginative force of the twentieth century. Alongside seminal novels—from the notorious Crash (1973)to the semi-autobiographical Empire of the Sun (1984)—Bal…
Owing to their unique magnetic, phosphorescent, and catalytic properties, rare earths are the elements that make possible teverything from the miniaturization of electronics, to the enabling of green energy and medical technologies, to supporting essential telecommunications and defense systems. An iPhone uses eight rare earths for everything from its colored screen, to its speakers, to the min…
The fifteen essays collected in Hard Reading argue that science fiction has its own internal rhetoric, relying on devices such as neologism, dialogism, semantic shifts, the use of unreliable narrators. It is a “high-informationâ€_x009d_ genre which does not follow the Flaubertian ideal of le mot juste, “the right wordâ€_x009d_, preferring le mot imprévisible, “the unp…
Our fear of the world ending, like our fear of the dark, is ancient, deep-seated and perennial. It crosses boundaries of space and time, recurs in all human communities and finds expression in every aspect of cultural production—from pre-historic cave paintings to high-tech computer games.
"Finland-Swedish writer Monika Fagerholm is one of the most important contemporary Nordic authors. Her experimental, puzzling and daring novels, such as Underbara kvinnor vid vatten (1994) and Den amerikanska flickan (2004), have attracted much critical attention. She has won several literary awards, including the Nordic prize from the Swedish Academy in 2016; her works have travelled across na…
The recent exhibitions dedicated to Botticelli around the world show, more than ever, the significant and continued debate about the artist. Botticelli Past and Present engages with this debate. The book comprises four thematic parts, spanning four centuries of Botticelli’s artistic fame and reception from the fifteenth century. Each part comprises a number of essays and includes a short intr…
Well-known in science fiction for tomb-raiding and mummy-wrangling, the archaeologist has been a rich source for imagining ‘strange new worlds’ from ‘strange old worlds.’ But more than a well-spring for SF scenarios, the genre’s archaeological imaginary invites us to consider the ideological implications of digging up the past buried in the future. A cultural study of an array of very…
The latest developments regarding the theory and practice of effectively resolving conflict in water resources and environmental management are presented in this book by respected experts from around the globe. Water conflicts are particularly complex and challenging to solve because water and environmental issues span both the societal realm, in which people and organizations interact, and the…