Directed by Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Birth) and starring Scarlett Johansson, the 2013 film Under the Skin contains elements of science fiction and fantasy, horror, mystery, and thriller. Arguably the most compelling of Johansson's career, the movie follows a unique tale of one woman's journey to self-discovery. This is the first book to be written about the quiet masterpiece, revisiting the film scene-by-scene through all its cinematic elements. Extensive interviews detail the challenges the filmmakers faced--from hidden filming on the streets of Glasgow to defying a blizzard in the Scottish Highlands. Readers are invited to explore connections between the movie and its science fiction cousins and discover the reasons why Under the Skin deserves to find a wider audience.
Book one of the "Homeworld" trilogy starts with teenagers Candy and Carl Tennison facing the start of another school year, when their parents drop a bomb. They claim they're not from this planet. They're alien researchers and they've been ordered to return home because of pursuit by the U.S. government. So begins an adventure which sends the Tennisons running from both earth and homeworld agents. Agents who could be anyone, anywhere. An adventure which will send one of them to another galaxy.
Tara, an Indian-American junior at Brierly prep school, feels her world dramatically change when a mirror planet to Earth is discovered and she, in this new era of scientific history, reconsiders her self and possible selves.
"Young sorcery fans . . . set aside Harry Potter and pick up Merlin! ["The Mirror of Merlin" is] ingeniousIfilled with rich images [and] surprising touches of humor.U--"Cincinnati Enquirer. TRich with magic."--"The New York Times Book Review."
In the mid-1990s, astronomers made history when they began to find planets orbiting stars in the Milky Way. More than eight hundred planets have been found since then, yet none of them is anything like Earth and none could support life. Now, armed with more powerful technology, planet hunters are racing to find a true twin of Earth. Science writer Michael Lemonick has unique access to these exoplaneteers, as they call themselves, and Mirror Earth unveils their passionate quest. Unlike competitors in other races, Geoff Marcy, Bill Borucki, David Charbonneau, Sara Seager, and others actually consult and cooperate with one another. But only one will be the first to find Earth's twin. Mirror Earth tells the story of their competition.
Few authors have achieved such renown as World Fantasy Life Achievement honoree and Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master Andre Norton. With the love of readers and the praise of critics, Norton’s books have sold millions of copies worldwide. In this great science fiction novel, Andre Norton brings to new life the legendary King Arthur and the wizard Merlin in the light of modern knowledge of a lost period of history and today’s understanding of science and interplanetary communication. Yet, as in all Norton’s wonder novels, this is a fabulous adventure in fantasy. Here is Merlin, half star-born, gifted with the advice of an alien intelligence, given the task of renewing civilization and starting humanity again up the ladder to the stars. Here is Arthur, unaware of his stellar heritage. And here, too, is the Lady of the Lake, akin to Merlin in that she is also a listener to the music of the spheres and obedient to a celestial command post.
When Tonia meets Branko, an alien who was sent to earth to bring a female back to his planet, her life is forever changed as their unusual relationship develops over one magical summer. Reprint.
A six-eyed teenage alien refugee becomes a Hollywood star in this hilarious series opener by the bestselling authors of the Hank Zipzer series, Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver. When thirteen-year-old Buddy Burger has to flee from his alien planet, he crash lands in an even wilder place: Hollywood, California. But no one is shocked to see a six-eyed alien strolling around the Universal back lot. The tourists just think he’s an actor in a supercool alien costume. And the fancy Hollywood directors take notice too. They cast Buddy in a popular TV show playing (of course) an alien. After a video of his first episode goes viral, he becomes an overnight sensation, and suddenly, his world is filled with adoring fans, rides in glamorous limos, and appearances at all-the-shrimp-you-can-eat red carpet parties! Will Buddy be able to keep his secret when all eyes are on him? Or will the glitz and glam of Hollywood prove too much for this alien superstar? “Alien Superstar has it all . . . action, suspense, and big laughs!” —Jeff Kinney, author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series “Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver keep us laughing while slipping in a lesson for kids—accept everyone as they are, even if they have suction cups for feet. Alien Superstar is a super fun read for middle grades on up.” —Jennifer Garner “A funny interstellar adventure that will have readers watching the cosmos for the second book to arrive.” —SLJ Review "Winkler and Oliver bring their sharply honed sense of comedy and extensive experience in the television industry to Buddy’s antics on the set. . . . This results in an endearingly strange protagonist that will resonate with any kid who has felt like an outsider. A sense of humor and empathy are required for this zany adventure.” —Booklist
For over five hundred years the Russians wondered what kind of people their Arctic and sub-Arctic subjects were. "They have mouths between their shoulders and eyes in their chests," reported a fifteenth-century tale. "They rove around, live of their own free will, and beat the Russian people," complained a seventeenth-century Cossack. "Their actions are exceedingly rude. They do not take off their hats and do not bow to each other," huffed an eighteenth-century scholar. They are "children of nature" and "guardians of ecological balance," rhapsodized early nineteenth-century and late twentieth-century romantics. Even the Bolsheviks, who categorized the circumpolar foragers as "authentic proletarians," were repeatedly puzzled by the "peoples from the late Neolithic period who, by virtue of their extreme backwardness, cannot keep up either economically or culturally with the furious speed of the emerging socialist society."Whether described as brutes, aliens, or endangered indigenous populations, the so-called small peoples of the north have consistently remained a point of contrast for speculations on Russian identity and a convenient testing ground for policies and images that grew out of these speculations. In Arctic Mirrors, a vividly rendered history of circumpolar peoples in the Russian empire and the Russian mind, Yuri Slezkine offers the first in-depth interpretation of this relationship. No other book in any language links the history of a colonized non-Russian people to the full sweep of Russian intellectual and cultural history. Enhancing his account with vintage prints and photographs, Slezkine reenacts the procession of Russian fur traders, missionaries, tsarist bureaucrats, radical intellectuals, professional ethnographers, and commissars who struggled to reform and conceptualize this most "alien" of their subject populations.Slezkine reconstructs from a vast range of sources the successive official policies and prevailing attitudes toward the northern peoples, interweaving the resonant narratives of Russian and indigenous contemporaries with the extravagant images of popular Russian fiction. As he examines the many ironies and ambivalences involved in successive Russian attempts to overcome northern—and hence their own—otherness, Slezkine explores the wider issues of ethnic identity, cultural change, nationalist rhetoric, and not-so European colonialism.
Harriet Rose, 26, is an American photographer just winning recognition for her work. A travel fellowship brings her to visit her best friend and former roommate, Anne Gordon, in Switzerland. In an ongoing letter to her boyfriend, Harriet reports on strange developments in Anne's life, most notably her affair with a much older married man, which seems to be leading to a disastrous conclusion. Before she can rescue Anne, events take a series of unexpected turns, and Harriet must reexamine her own life and past, and come to terms with the difficulties and possibilities of human relationships. Already excerpted in The New Yorker, Katharine Weber's witty first novel of attraction and deception, a tale with the sensibility of a Margaret Atwood, pulses with cultural references and word games that echo Nabokov.
