A True Tale of Invention, Obsession and Murder. When three men set out on a quest to build a real-life Buck Rogers-style flying machine, their obsession with the Rocketbelt 2000 shattered their friendship and set in motion an astonishing chain of events involving theft, deception, assault, a bizarre kidnapping, a ten million dollar lawsuit and a horrifically brutal murder.
Edward Robinson was a British pirate who sailed with Blackbeard during the Golden Age of Piracy in the early 1700s. Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, Robinson crossed the Atlantic to the Caribbean and the Americas. In 1718, he was captured and sentenced to death by hanging in Charleston, South Carolina. But was he really a murderous sea-robber, and did he deserve his brutal fate?
Tracing the remarkable history of a certain kind of flying machine—from the rocket belt to the jet belt to the flying platform and all the way to Yves Rossy's 21st-century free flights using a jet-powered wing—this historical account delves into the technology that made these devices possible and the reasons why they never became commercial successes on a mass scale. These individual lift devices, as they were blandly labeled by the government men who financed much of their development, answered man's desire to simply step outside and take flight. No runways, no wings, no pilot's license were required. But the history of the jet pack did not follow its expected trajectory and the devices that were thought to become as commonplace as cars have instead become one of the most overpromised technologies of all time. This fascinating account profiles the inventors and pilots, the hucksters and cheats, and the businessmen and soldiers who were involved with the machines, and it tells a great American story of a technology whose promise may yet, one day, come to fruition.
How did we become football fans? Savage Enthusiasm traces the evolution of the football fan from the sport's earliest origins right up to the present day, exploring how football became the world's most popular spectator sport, and why it became the undisputed game of the people.
Jetpack Dreams chronicles the colorful pop history and science of that most amazing and mysterious of machines, the jetpack. While exploring our collective fascination with flight, the tale takes readers from the first flimsy, shoulder-mounted wings to Bill Suitor's 1984 Olympic flight in front of billions of viewers around the world; from a gruesome jetpack-driven murder in Houston in the mid-1990s to the secret laboratories and government facilities of today. Journalist Mac Montandon also explores Hollywood's fascination with the subject, from the 1949 serial King of the Rocket Men to Lost in Space, The Jetsons and The Rocketeer to the cultural jetpack phenomenon represented by Buck Rogers, James Bond, and Boba Fett. He travels the world to meet jetpack enthusiasts who are readying their own personal flying machines for takeoff. Ultimately, it's the search for an answer to two simple questions: Where is the jetpack that was promised to him, and to all of us, years ago? And if it's out there, can he catch a ride?
An exciting book about real-life technology derived from science fiction and its impact on the world. Science fiction is a vital part of popular culture, influencing the way we all look at the world. TV shows like Star Trek and movies from Forbidden Planet to Inception have influenced scientists to enter the profession and have shaped our futures. Science fiction doesn't set out to predict what will happen - it's far more about how human beings react to "What if?..." - but it is fascinating to see how science fiction and reality sometimes converge, sometimes take extraordinarily different paths. Ten Billion Tomorrows brings to life a whole host of science fiction topics, from the virtual environment of The Matrix and the intelligent computer HAL in 2001, to force fields, ray guns and cyborgs. We discover how science fiction has excited us with possibilities, whether it is Star Trek's holodeck inspiring makers of iconic video games Doom and Quake to create the virtual interactive worlds that transformed gaming, or the strange physics that has made real cloaking devices possible. Mixing remarkable science with the imagination of our greatest science fiction writers, Ten Billion Tomorrows will delight science fiction lovers and popular science devotees alike.
Meet Hughie Youngkin, trapped in Southern California's worst ever firestorm, a smalltown loser with nothing but a stolen mariachi outfit and a battered guitar case. His hopes of becoming a rockstar are in ruins and he's beginning to wish he'd never left Big Springs, Alabama. But his home town doesn't understand him, the girl he loved has left, and his overbearing mother chews over his shortcomings with her Hungryman's portions of barbequed beef at Webster's Steakhouse. So Hughie does what any Johnny Lonely would do; he takes off to find his estranged brother and chase the American Dream.
This is an anthology collecting the very best Victorian football writing, covering the birth and development of the world's greatest game, and written by those who were there to witness it.
