The Twilight of Briareus

The Twilight of Briareus
Author: Richard Cowper
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2013-05-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0575108169

On the murky outskirts of our solar system, a lonely star has exploded, emitting monstrous doses of radiation . . . The year is 1983. The exploding star Briareus Delta, 132 light years away, provokes only mild interest from planet Earth. Suddenly, appalling tornadoes and storms ravage the cities and countryside, leaving death and desolation in their wake. Then mankind realises another terrifying side-effect - every adult in the world has been rendered infertile. Schoolteacher Calvin Johnson discovers he is one of the select few to have acquired strange psychic powers. Termed 'Zetas', these people experience mental flashes of the future - a future of freezing isolation, snow-swept landscapes and bleak, ice-bound cities. A second ice-age is imminent as man faces the ultimate horror . . . extinction.

Discourses and Narrations in the Biosciences

Discourses and Narrations in the Biosciences
Author: Brian Hurwitz
Publisher: V&R unipress GmbH
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2011
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3899718313

Discourses and Narrations in the Biosciences investigates the forms of writing in which scientific claims are formulated and announced. Argumentative strategies, compositional rules, and figurative expressions in communication and narrativization of scientific knowledge are the focus of interdisciplinary contributions by humanities and science scholars. The first part of the book, dedicated to 'Rhetorical and Epistemological Aspects of Science Writing', addresses how scientific pursuits and methods feed into multi-level texts that generate responses within science, society, and culture. The second part, entitled 'Bioscientific Discourses and Narrations', examines popularisations and fictionalizations of science in relation to diversity, deviancy, ageing, illness, reproduction, the evolution of humankind, mathematical models of biomedical systems, and the myth of the heroic scientist. Assessing the narrative impetus and command of literary and meta-discoursive strategies shown by contemporary science writers enhances understanding of the methods and conventions through which the biosciences produce knowledge.

Future and Fantastic Worlds

Future and Fantastic Worlds
Author: Sheldon Jaffery
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Total Pages: 318
Release: 1987-01-01
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1557420025

Future and Fantastic Worlds embodies an unusual approach to the field of bibliographic research, including over 700 annotations of every DAW book published through mid-1987, with indexes by author, artist, and title, providing a massive guide to modern SF writers and their works, with much background data. Interspersed throughout the book are numerous wry, irreverent, and amusing observations offered by the late and highly respected researcher in this extremely valuable genre tool.

Lost Classics

Lost Classics
Author: Michael Ondaatje
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2011-03-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0307781151

An Anchor Books Original Seventy-four distinguished writers tell personal tales of books loved and lost–great books overlooked, under-read, out of print, stolen, scorned, extinct, or otherwise out of commission. Compiled by the editors of Brick: A Literary Magazine, Lost Classics is a reader’s delight: an intriguing and entertaining collection of eulogies for lost books. As the editors have written in a joint introduction to the book, “being lovers of books, we’ve pulled a scent of these absences behind us our whole reading lives, telling people about books that exist only on our own shelves, or even just in our own memory.” Anyone who has ever been changed by a book will find kindred spirits in the pages of Lost Classics. Each of the editors has contributed a lost book essay to this collection, including Michael Ondaatje on Sri Lankan filmmaker Tissa Abeysekara’s Bringing Tony Home, a novella about a mutual era of childhood. Also included are Margaret Atwood on sex and death in the scandalous Doctor Glas, first published in Sweden in 1905; Russell Banks on the off-beat travelogue Too Late to Turn Back by Barbara Greene–the “slightly ditzy” cousin of Graham; Bill Richardson on a children’s book for adults by Russell Hoban; Ronald Wright on William Golding’s Pincher Martin; Caryl Phillips on Michael Mac Liammoir’s account of his experiences on the set of Orson Welles’s Othello, and much, much more.

Contact

Contact
Author: Carl Sagan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2016-12-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 150117231X

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and astronomer Carl Sagan imagines the greatest adventure of all—the discovery of an advanced civilization in the depths of space. In December of 1999, a multinational team journeys out to the stars, to the most awesome encounter in human history. Who—or what—is out there? In Cosmos, Carl Sagan explained the universe. In Contact, he predicts its future—and our own.

Profundis

Profundis
Author: Richard Cowper
Publisher: Gateway
Total Pages: 143
Release: 2011-09-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0575108185

Tom Jones is naïve, impressionable and very, very willing. His chief talent is conversing with dolphins in the Aquatic Mammals Division of HMS Profundis, a gargantuan submarine destined to roam the ocean depths for a century following the nuclear holocaust. Years pass and mad captain succeeds mad captain. Eventually the ship falls under the command of one Admiral Prood, a kind, understanding man who finally comes to a startling conclusion. He is God the Father. The Almighty Himself. And all he needs now is a son to sit at his right hand. Enter the innocent Tom Jones.

An Informal History of the Hugos

An Informal History of the Hugos
Author: Jo Walton
Publisher: Tor Books
Total Pages: 576
Release: 2018-08-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0765379082

Engaged, passionate, and consistently entertaining, this is a book for those who enjoyed Walton's previous collection of essays from Tor.com, the Locus Award-winning What Makes This Book So Great.The Hugo Awards, named after pioneer science fiction publisher Hugo Gernsback, and voted on by members of the World Science Fiction Society, have been given out since 1953. They are widely considered the most prestigious award in science fiction.Between 2010 and 2013, Jo Walton wrote a series of posts for Tor.com, surveying the Hugo finalists and winners from the award's inception up to the year 2000. Her contention was that each year's full set of finalists generally tells a meaningful story about the state of science fiction at that time.Walton's cheerfully opinionated and vastly well-informed posts provoked valuable conversation among the field's historians. Now these posts, lightly revised, have been gathered into this book, along with a small selection of the comments posted by SF luminaries such as Rich Horton, Gardner Dozois, and the late David G. Hartwell.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, Vol 1

Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, Vol 1
Author: R. Reginald
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Total Pages: 802
Release: 2010-09-01
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 0941028755

Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, A Checklist, 1700-1974, Volume one of Two, contains an Author Index, Title Index, Series Index, Awards Index, and the Ace and Belmont Doubles Index.

Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Literature

Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Literature
Author: Brian M. Stableford
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2004
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780810849389

This reference tracks the development of speculative fiction influenced by the advancement of science and the idea of progress from the eighteenth century to the present day. The major authors and publications of the genre and significant subgenres are covered. Additionally there are entries on fields of science and technology which have been particularly prolific in provoking such speculation. The list of acronyms and abbreviations, the chronology covering the literature from the 1700s through the present, the introductory essay, and the dictionary entries provide science fiction novices and enthusiasts as well as serious writers and critics with a wonderful foundation for understanding the realm of science fiction literature. The extensive bibliography that includes books, journals, fanzines, and websites demonstrates that science fiction literature commands a massive following.