Nordic Visions: The Best of Nordic Speculative Fiction
Nordic Visions: The Best of Nordic Speculative Fiction

Author: John Ajvide Lindqvist

Publisher: Rebellion Publishing Ltd

Published: 2023-10-10

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1837860289

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A Unique Speculative Fiction Collection From The Nordic Countries Storytelling has been a major force in the Nordic countries for thousands of years, renowned for its particular sense of dark humour, featuring pacts with nature and a view of the world you seldom find in other places. Perhaps it is the freezing cold winter? The closeness to the Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic? Maybe it’s the huge ancient forests... Most have heard about Nordic crime fiction with its dark noir flare or the Icelandic Sagas. This anthology combines all that is unique about Nordic speculative fiction, from the darkest dystopian science fiction to terrifying horror. From the rational to the eccentric, these stories combine a deep sense of place with social criticism, themes of loneliness and the concern for humanity's impact on the wilderness. Featuring 16 stories from the best contemporary speculative authors from Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and The Faroe Islands, including John Ajvide Lindqvist, Hannu Rajaniemi, Tor Åge Bringsværd and more, many of which are appearing in English for the very first time.

European Science Fiction #1
European Science Fiction #1

Author: Olivier Paquet

Publisher: Future Fiction

Published: 2021-06-24

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 9788832077254

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The anthology "Knowing the Neighbours" features a selection of Near-Future stories written by some of the best European Science Fiction authors from 15 countries and in translation from 11 languages. Europe has always been the forge of fantastic literature from True Story by Lucian and The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, passing from Micromega by Voltaire and Somnium by Johannes Kepler, up to the novels of Jules Verne and the short stories by Primo Levi. Moreover, Europe has also been the founder of fundamental literary and artistic vanguards (like Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism) that deeply influenced our consciousness and thinking. That's why Europe has still a lot to offer to the future of humanity if only its stories would be translated more and more. As European readers and writers know so much more about American and English Science Fiction than their own national ones, it's about time to get to know our neighbours through the stories of our fellow European writers. Ranging from disaster tourism to the use of AIs to improve the quality of wine, from planned obsolescence in common objects to aesthetic benchmarks to value everything, from animatronics as new friends to climate change and community resilience, their stories will take you on a tour along the many shapes of European futures. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 - Roseweed by Vasso Christou (Greece) 2 - Amber Queen by Olivier Paquet (France) 3 - Fragmentation by Tom Crosshill (Latvia) 4 - Planned Obsolescence by Nina Horvath (Austria) 5 - The Keresztury TVirs by Ivan Popov (Bulgaria) 6 - The Golden Nose by Neil Williamson (UK) 7 - Goal invariance under radical self-modification by Julie Novakova (Czech Republic) 8 - Beautymark by Linda De Santi (Italy) 9 - Petware by Uwe Post (Germany) 10 - The Naming Tree by J.S. Meresmaa (Finland) 11 - Any House in the Storm by Tais Teng (Netherlands) 12 - Lying Weather by Krystyna Chodorowska (Poland) 13 - Reaping Day by Anna Jakobsson Lund (Sweden) 14 - The Rescue by Margrét Helgadóttir (Norway) 15 - Team Memory by Carme Torras (Spain)

Drowned Worlds
Drowned Worlds

Author: Charlie Jane Anders

Publisher: Solaris

Published: 2016-07-12

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 1849979308

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We stand on the brink of one of the greatest ecological disasters of our time – the world is warming and seas are rising, and yet water is life; it brings change. Where one thing is wiped away, another rises. Drowned Worlds looks at the future we might have if the oceans rise – good or bad. Here you’ll find stories of action, adventure, romance and, yes, warning and apocalypse. Stories inspired by Ballard’s The Drowned World, Sterling’s Islands in the Net, and Ryman’s The Child Garden; stories that allow that things may get worse, but remembers that such times also bring out the best in us all. Multi-award winning editor Jonathan Strahan has put together sixteen unique tales of deluged worlds and those who fight to survive and strive to live. Featuring fiction by Paul McAuley, Ken Liu, Kim Stanley Robinson, Nina Allan, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Christopher Rowe, Nalo Hopkinson, Sean Williams, Jeffrey Ford, Lavie Tidhar, Rachel Swirsky, James Morrow, Charlie Jane Anders, Sam J. Miller and Catherynne M. Valente.

Iraq + 100
Iraq + 100

Author: Hassan Blasim

Publisher: Tordotcom

Published: 2017-09-12

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1250161312

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One of NPR's Best Books of 2017! A groundbreaking anthology of science fiction from Iraq that will challenge your perception of what it means to be “The Other” “History is a hostage, but it will bite through the gag you tie around its mouth, bite through and still be heard.”—Operation Daniel In a calm and serene world, one has the luxury of imagining what the future might look like. Now try to imagine that future when your way of life has been devastated by forces beyond your control. Iraq + 100 poses a question to Iraqi writers (those who still live in that nation, and those who have joined the worldwide diaspora): What might your home country look like in the year 2103, a century after a disastrous foreign invasion? Using science fiction, allegory, and magical realism to challenge the perception of what it means to be “The Other”, this groundbreaking anthology edited by Hassan Blasim contains stories that are heartbreakingly surreal, and yet utterly recognizable to the human experience. Though born out of exhaustion, fear, and despair, these stories are also fueled by themes of love, family, and endurance, and woven through with a delicate thread of hope for the future. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

City of Saints and Madmen
City of Saints and Madmen

Author: Jeff VanderMeer

Publisher: Picador

Published: 2022-01-11

Total Pages: 674

ISBN-13: 0374721157

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From Jeff VanderMeer, the author of Borne and Annihilation, comes the paperback reissue of his cult classic City of Saints and Madmen. In this reinvention of the literature of the fantastic, you hold in your hands an invitation to a place unlike any you’ve ever visited—an invitation delivered by one of our most audacious and astonishing literary magicians. City of elegance and squalor. Of religious fervor and wanton lusts. And everywhere, on the walls of courtyards and churches, an incandescent fungus of mysterious and ominous origin. In Ambergris, a would-be suitor discovers that a sunlit street can become a killing ground in the blink of an eye. An artist receives an invitation to a beheading—and finds himself enchanted. And a patient in a mental institution is convinced that he’s made up a city called Ambergris, imagined its every last detail, and that he’s really from a place called Chicago . . . By turns sensuous and terrifying, filled with exotica and eroticism, this interwoven collection of stories, histories, and “eyewitness” reports invokes a universe within a puzzle box where you can lose—and find—yourself again.

Sophie's World
Sophie's World

Author: Jostein Gaarder

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2007-03-20

Total Pages: 735

ISBN-13: 1466804270

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A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

My Mechanical Romance
My Mechanical Romance

Author: Alexene Farol Follmuth

Publisher: Holiday House

Published: 2022-05-31

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 0823452883

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Opposites attract in this nerdy YA romance from the NYT best-selling author of The Atlas Six! "It’s rom-com perfection."—Adiba Jaigirdar, author of The Henna Wars Bel doesn't want to think about the future. College apps? You’re funny. Extracurriculars? Not a chance. Joining a robotics club filled with boys who ignore her or--even worse--constantly ask if she needs help? Please, anything but that. But when she accidentally reveals a talent for engineering in class, she has no choice. Enter Mateo Luna, the handsome captain of the club. Teo instantly recognizes Bel's talent. He needs her on the team. And not just because he can't stop thinking about the tiny dusting of freckles around her eyes, or how she got him hooked on Taylor Swift--it's because Bel sees him. She challenges him. But when they seriously start butting heads, Bel wonders: Is there really room for a girl like her in STEM? In her YA debut, Alexene Farol Follmuth, author of The Atlas Six (under the penname Olivie Blake), explores both the challenges girls of color face in STEM and the vulnerability of first love with unfailing wit and honesty. Told from dual points of view, My Mechanical Romance is not only swoonworthy--it's downright empowering. A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection A Georgia Peach Book Award for Teen Readers Nominee A Massachusetts Teen Choice Book Award Nominee

Lingua Cosmica
Lingua Cosmica

Author: Dale Knickerbocker

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2018-05-04

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 0252050428

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Anthologies, awards, journals, and works in translation have sprung up to reflect science fiction's increasingly international scope. Yet scholars and students alike face a problem. Where does one begin to explore global SF in the absence of an established canon? Lingua Cosmica opens the door to some of the creators in the vanguard of international science fiction. Eleven experts offer innovative English-language scholarship on figures ranging from Cuban pioneer Daína Chaviano to Nigerian filmmaker Olatunde Osunsanmi to the Hugo Award-winning Chinese writer Liu Cixin. These essays invite readers to ponder the themes, formal elements, and unique cultural characteristics within the works of these irreplaceable—if too-little-known—artists. Dale Knickerbocker includes fantasists and genre-benders pushing SF along new evolutionary paths even as they draw on the traditions of their own literary cultures. Includes essays on Daína Chaviano (Cuba), Jacek Dukaj (Poland), Jean-Claude Dunyac (France), Andreas Eschbach (Germany), Angélica Gorodischer (Argentina), Sakyo Komatsu (Japan), Liu Cixin (China), Laurent McAllister (Yves Meynard and Jean-Louis Trudel, Francophone Canada), Olatunde Osunsanmi (Nigeria), Johanna Sinisalo (Finland), and Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (Russia). Contributors: Alexis Brooks de Vita, Pawel Frelik, Yvonne Howell, Yolanda Molina-Gavilán, Vibeke Rützou Petersen, Amy J. Ransom, Hanna-Riikka Roine, Hanna Samola, Mingwei Song, Tatsumi Takayuki, Juan Carlos Toledano Redondo, and Natacha Vas-Deyres.

Evolution and Popular Narrative
Evolution and Popular Narrative

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-06-07

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 9004391169

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The contributors to this volume share the assumption that popular narrative, when viewed with an evolutionary lens, offers an incisive index into human nature. In theory, narrative art could take a near infinity of possible forms. In actual practice, however, particular motifs, plot patterns, stereotypical figures, and artistic devices persistently resurface, indicating specific predilections frequently at odds with our actual living conditions. Our studies explore various media and genres to gauge the impact of our evolutionary inheritance, in interdependence with the respective cultural environments, on our aesthetic appreciation. As they suggest, research into mass culture is not only indispensable for evolutionary criticism but may also contribute to our understanding of prehistoric selection pressures that still influence modern preferences in popular narrative. Contributions by David Andrews, James Carney, Mathias Clasen, Brett Cooke, Tamás Dávid-Barrett, Tom Dolack, Kathryn Duncan, Isabel Behncke Izquierdo, Joe Keener, Alex C. Parrish, Todd K. Platts, Anna Rotkirch, Judith P. Saunders, Michelle Scalise Sugiyama, Dirk Vanderbeke, and Sophia Wege.

The Last Voyage of Skidbladnir
The Last Voyage of Skidbladnir

Author: Karin Tidbeck

Publisher: Tor Books

Published: 2019-01-14

Total Pages: 27

ISBN-13: 1250246377

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Award-winning author Karin Tidbeck presents a science fiction adventure of a mysterious spaceship on an interstellar voyage in The Last Voyage of Skidbladnir. Life on the transdimensional ship Skidbladnir is a strange one. The new janitor, Saga, finds herself in the company of an officious steward-bird, a surly and mysterious engineer, and the shadowy Captain. Who the odd passengers are, and according to what plan the ship travels, is unclear. Just when Saga has begun to understand the inner workings of Skidbladnir, she discovers that something is wrong. Skidbladnir is sick. And it’s up to her and the engineer to fix it. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.