The World of Dew and Other Stories

The World of Dew and Other Stories
Author: Julian MortimerSmith
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 147
Release: 2021-04-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0253056829

Imagine a world populated by hideous trolls, time-traveling scientists, and intergalactic freighter captains—with smartphones and social media. The World of Dew and Other Stories, chosen by Michelle Pretorius as the 2020 Blue Light Books Prize winner, invites readers into 18 different universes that have unexpected resonances with our own modern life. While these tales are unabashedly sci-fi and fantasy, Julian Mortimer Smith approaches each at a curious angle. Ghosts are cataloged using a Pokémon Go–like app, a soldier has to get enough upvotes on social media before he is allowed to take a shot, and a golden age of cooperation begins as societies around the world prepare for a looming pandemic of blindness. In addition to featuring stories that have appeared in some of the world's top speculative fiction outlets, The World of Dew and Other Stories also includes five new stories published here for the first time. These tales are sometimes terrifying, sometimes touching, sometimes provocative, and occasionally very silly. They function both as windows through which readers can glimpse vast universes waiting to be explored and as mirrors reflecting our own reality back at us in a strange and unfamiliar light.

Invisible Planets

Invisible Planets
Author: Ken Liu
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2016-11-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0765384183

Invisible Planets, edited by multi award-winning writer Ken Liu--translator of the bestselling and Hugo Award-winning novel The Three Body Problem by acclaimed Chinese author Cixin Liu--is his second thought-provoking anthology of Chinese short speculative fiction. Invisible Planets is a groundbreaking anthology of Chinese short speculative fiction. The thirteen stories in this collection, including two by Cixin Liu and the Hugo and Sturgeon award-nominated “Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfang, add up to a strong and diverse representation of Chinese SF. Some have won awards, some have garnered serioius critical acclaim, some have been selected for Year’s Best anthologies, and some are simply Ken Liu’s personal favorites. To round out the collection, there are several essays from Chinese scholars and authors, plus an illuminating introduction by Ken Liu. Anyone with an interest in international science fiction will find Invisible Planets an indispensable addition to their collection. For more Chinese SF in translation, check out Broken Stars. Stories: “The Year of the Rat” by Chen Qiufan “The Fist of Lijian” by Chen Qiufan “The Flower of Shazui” by Chen Qiufan “A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight” by Xia Jia “Tongtong’s Summer” by Xia Jia “Night Journey of the Dragon-Horse” by Xia jia “The City of Silence” by Ma Boyong “Invisible Planets” by Hao Jingfang “Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfang “Call Girl” by Tang Fei “Grave of the Fireflies” by Cheng Jingbo “The Circle” by Liu Cixin “Taking Care of God” by Liu Cixin Essays: “The Worst of All Possible Universes and the Best of All Possible Earths: Three-Body and Chinese Science Fiction” by Liu Cixin and Ken Liu “The Torn Generation” Chinese Science Fiction in a Culture in Transition” by Chen Qiufan and Ken Liu “What Makes Chinese Science Fiction Chinese?” by Xia Jia and Ken Liu At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Night Shift

Night Shift
Author: Eileen Gunn
Publisher: PM Press
Total Pages: 89
Release: 2022-08-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1629639567

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.

The Humans in the Walls

The Humans in the Walls
Author: Eric James Stone
Publisher: WordFire +ORM
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2020-09-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1680570617

“A delectable stew of fantasy, horror, hard science fiction, and alternate history in 27 sumptuous stories and one powerful novella. . . . Stunning” (Publishers Weekly). Space opera. Superheroes. Horror and fairy tales. What if there was a multi-genre story collection available from a Nebula-award winning author? Eric James Stone’s immersive collection, The Humans in the Walls, contains twenty-seven tales of science fiction and fantasy, ranging from hard science fiction to fairy-tale fantasy, from humor to horror. Within these pages you’ll find supernatural beings, uploaded brains, psychic powers, space colonies, alternate timelines, aliens, superheroes, and giant AI starships that pay little attention to The Humans in the Walls. Each story contains special commentary by the author.

A Good American

A Good American
Author: Alex George
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2013-02-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0425253171

A cloth bag containing eight copies of the title and a folder containing book sign out sheets.

Creating Identity in the Victorian Fictional Autobiography

Creating Identity in the Victorian Fictional Autobiography
Author: Heidi L. Pennington
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2018-04-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0826274064

This is the first book-length study of the fictional autobiography, a subgenre that is at once widely recognizable and rarely examined as a literary form with its own history and dynamics of interpretation. Heidi L. Pennington shows that the narrative form and genre expectations associated with the fictional autobiography in the Victorian period engages readers in a sustained meditation on the fictional processes that construct selfhood both in and beyond the text. Through close readings of Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, and other well-known examples of the subgenre, Pennington shows how the Victorian fictional autobiography subtly but persistently illustrates that all identities are fictions. Despite the subgenre’s radical implications regarding the nature of personal identity, fictional autobiographies were popular in their own time and continue to inspire devotion in readers. This study sheds new light on what makes this subgenre so compelling, up to and including in the present historical moment of precipitous social and technological change. As we continue to grapple with the existential question of what determines “who we really are,” this book explores the risks and rewards of embracing conscious acts of fictional self-production in an unstable world.

The History of Science Fiction

The History of Science Fiction
Author: Adam Roberts
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 537
Release: 2016-08-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137569573

This book is the definitive critical history of science fiction. The 2006 first edition of this work traced the development of the genre from Ancient Greece and the European Reformation through to the end of the 20th century. This new 2nd edition has been revised thoroughly and very significantly expanded. An all-new final chapter discusses 21st-century science fiction, and there is new material in every chapter: a wealth of new readings and original research. The author’s groundbreaking thesis that science fiction is born out of the 17th-century Reformation is here bolstered with a wide range of new supporting material and many hundreds of 17th- and 18th-century science fiction texts, some of which have never been discussed before. The account of 19th-century science fiction has been expanded, and the various chapters tracing the twentieth-century bring in more writing by women, and science fiction in other media including cinema, TV, comics, fan-culture and other modes.

Science Fiction and Indian Women Writers

Science Fiction and Indian Women Writers
Author: Urvashi Kuhad
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2021-07-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000415864

Science fiction, as a literature of fantasy, goes beyond the mundane to ask the question: what if the world were different from the way it is? It often challenges the real, builds on imagination, places no limits on human capacities, and encourages readers to think outside their social and cultural conditioning. This book presents a systematic study of Indian women’s science fiction. It offers a critical analysis of the works of four female Indian writers of science fiction: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, Manjula Padmanabhan, Priya Sarukkai Chabria and Vandana Singh. The author considers not only the evolution of science fiction writing in India, but also discusses the use of innovations and unique themes including science fiction in different Indian languages; the literary, political, and educational activism of the women writers; and eco-feminism and the idea of cloning in writing, to argue that this genre could be viewed as a vibrant representation of freedom of expression and radical literature. This ground-breaking volume will be useful for scholars and researchers of English literature. It will also prove a very useful source for further studies into Indian literature, science and technology studies, women’s and gender studies, comparative literature and cultural studies.

The Loser

The Loser
Author: Thomas Bernhard
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2010-11-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307773469

Thomas Bernhard was one of the most original writers of the twentieth century. His formal innovation ranks with Beckett and Kafka, his outrageously cantankerous voice recalls Dostoevsky, but his gift for lacerating, lyrical, provocative prose is incomparably his own.One of Bernhard's most acclaimed novels, The Loser centers on a fictional relationship between piano virtuoso Glenn Gould and two of his fellow students who feel compelled to renounce their musical ambitions in the face of Gould's incomparable genius. One commits suicide, while the other-- the obsessive, witty, and self-mocking narrator-- has retreated into obscurity. Written as a monologue in one remarkable unbroken paragraph, The Loser is a brilliant meditation on success, failure, genius, and fame.