A novel on the Thousand Cultures, as Earth's colonies are known. Comprising more than a thousand planets, each has a unique civilization. The protagonists are two Earth agents--a married couple--sent to negotiate peace between warring Tamils and neo-Mayan Indians.
The essential companion for lovers of the contemporary novel Over the past fifty years, fiction in English has never looked more various. Books bulkier than Victorian three-deckers appear alongside works of minimalist brevity, and experiments with form have produced everything from verse novels to Twitter-thread narratives. This is truly a golden age. But what unites this kaleidoscopic array of genres and styles? Celebrated writer and critic Peter Kemp shows how modern writers are obsessed with the past. In a series of engaging and illuminating chapters, Retroland traces this novelistic preoccupation with history, from the imperial and the political to the personal and the literary. Featuring famous names from across the United Kingdom, United States, and the wider Anglophone world, ranging from Salman Rushdie to Sarah Waters, Toni Morrison to Hilary Mantel, this is a work of remarkable synthesis and clarity—a wonderfully readable and enjoyably opinionated guide to our current literary landscape.
This book explores how media and religion combine to play a role in promoting peace and inciting violence. It analyses a wide range of media - from posters, cartoons and stained glass to websites, radio and film - and draws on diverse examples from around the world, including Iran, Rwanda and South Africa. Part One considers how various media forms can contribute to the creation of violent environments: by memorialising past hurts; by instilling fear of the ‘other’; by encouraging audiences to fight, to die or to kill neighbours for an apparently greater good. Part Two explores how film can bear witness to past acts of violence, how film-makers can reveal the search for truth, justice and reconciliation, and how new media can become sites for non-violent responses to terrorism and government oppression. To what extent can popular media arts contribute to imagining and building peace, transforming weapons into art, swords into ploughshares? Jolyon Mitchell skillfully combines personal narrative, practical insight and academic analysis.
Chadaga's ambitious study proceeds from the idea that glass - in its uses as a material object and as it was depicted in works of art - is a key to understanding the evolution of Russian identity from the eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth.
At last, _Up Through an Empty House of Stars_ brings together the best of the never before collected SF reviews and articles that helped build David Langford's towering reputation since 1980. Complementing the review columns collected in _The Complete Critical Assembly_ and the knockabout essays and squibs in _The Silence of the Langford_, this volume's 100 glittering selections mix serious critical insight with the inimitable Langford wit. In 2002 David Langford won his sixteenth Hugo award as Best Fan Writer, for critical and humorous commentary on SF. In the same year his occasionally scandalous SF newsletter _Ansible_ won its fifth Hugo. Langford also received the 2001 Hugo for best short story, and the 2002 Skylark Award. Here he shines a unique light on classics like Ernest Bramah, G.K. Chesterton, Robert Heinlein and Jack Vance, and analyses major SF -- and major clunkers, and minor eccentrics -- of the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, continuing to the latest by such current stars as Gene Wolfe and China Mi, ville. Plus witty asides on crime fiction and its SF links, gleeful examination of writing so bad it's almost good, and (even at his most serious) turns of phrase to make you laugh aloud
A comprehensive and up-to-date encyclopedia to the fabrication, nature, properties, uses, and history of glass The Encyclopedia of Glass Science, Technology, History, and Culture has been designed to satisfy the needs and curiosity of a broad audience interested in the most varied aspects of material that is as old as the universe. As described in over 100 chapters and illustrated with 1100 figures, the practical importance of glass has increased over the ages since it was first man-made four millennia ago. The old-age glass vessels and window and stained glass now coexist with new high-tech products that include for example optical fibers, thin films, metallic, bioactive and hybrid organic-inorganic glasses, amorphous ices or all-solid-state batteries. In the form of scholarly introductions, the Encyclopedia chapters have been written by 151 noted experts working in 23 countries. They present at a consistent level and in a self-consistent manner these industrial, technological, scientific, historical and cultural aspects. Addressing the most recent fundamental advances in glass science and technology, as well as rapidly developing topics such as extra-terrestrial or biogenic glasses, this important guide: Begins with industrial glassmaking Turns to glass structure and to physical, transport and chemical properties Deals with interactions with light, inorganic glass families and organically related glasses Considers a variety of environmental and energy issues And concludes with a long section on the history of glass as a material from Prehistory to modern glass science The Encyclopedia of Glass Science, Technology, History, and Culture has been written not only for glass scientists and engineers in academia and industry, but also for material scientists as well as for art and industry historians. It represents a must-have, comprehensive guide to the myriad aspects this truly outstanding state of matter.
Her life was mosaic of broken pieces of colored glass. Built by her own destruction. Her brown the eyes, the windows to her soul. Her heart’s castle was sinking deep in her own ash. She saw herself shattered. Her shards sprinkling across her bedroom floor. The girl stained by pain and brokenness, left standing on the bank of life’s open shore. Bleeding from her own pain, forming a new beauty. A glass girl in search of something more.
Solitary, North Carolina is one of those small towns in the Smoky Mountains that could easily be overlooked. Yet Chris Buckley can’t overlook anything since he’s just moved there and fallen for the wrong girl. He’s made enemies with the wrong people. He’s starting to have nightmares about very, very wrong things. Something is happening in this creepy little town, and it seems to somehow center around Chris. A four-book YA series that will keep you up at night and make you wonder about its mysteries to the very end. #1 Solitary: When Chris Buckley moves to Solitary, North Carolina, he faces the reality of his parents’ divorce, a school full of nameless faces—and Jocelyn Evans. Jocelyn is beautiful and mysterious enough to leave Chris speechless. But the more Jocelyn resists him, the more the two are drawn together. Chris soon learns that Jocelyn has secrets as deep as the town itself. Secrets more terrifying than the bullies he faces in the locker room or his mother’s unexplained nightmares. He slowly begins to understand the horrific answers. The question is whether he can save Jocelyn in time. This first book in the Solitary Tales series will take you from the cold halls of high school to the dark rooms of an abandoned cabin—and remind you what it means to believe in what you cannot see. #2 Gravestone: At first, Chris Buckley was simply warned. And watched. But as Chris unravels the haunting riddles of the town of Solitary, he finds that much more than the life of a town is at stake. Whether facing a pastor with a house full of skeletons or a cousin he never knew existed, Chris is forced to choose between light and darkness, life and nightmarish death. Every choice he makes reminds him that the unthinkable has already happened—and if he trusts the wrong person, it may happen again. This second book in the Solitary Tales continues Chris’s journey toward finding out who he is and what his own role is in the darkness suffocating his tiny new hometown. Filled with shocking twists, Gravestone is a tale of a teenager thrown into a battle over a town, a secret—and ultimately his own soul. #3 Temptation: The third book in the Solitary Tales series for young adults, Temptation follows the soul-wrenching twists of Chris Buckley’s journey as he heads deeper into a darkness that threatens all he loves best. As a reluctant student at Harrington High’s summer school, Chris meets a fun-loving senior girl who offers a welcome diversion from Chris’s past. Soon Chris no longer searches for the truth about the town of Solitary. He no longer tries to pierce its shadows. He no longer questions his role in its mysteries. He makes a new choice: he runs. What he doesn’t realize is that he’s running the wrong way—and is very close to being beyond any choices at all. #4 Hurt: When Chris Buckley first encountered the mysteries of creepy Solitary, North Carolina, he had little idea how far he would fall into the town’s shadows. After losing the love of his life, Chris tried to do things his way. He hunted answers. Then he gave up trying to find them. But now Chris comes back to Solitary knowing there’s a purpose for his being there. As he watches his place in a twisted and evil bloodline become clear, Chris waits for the last battle—and wonders who will be left when he finally makes his stand. The fourth and final book in the Solitary Tales shines light into deep darkness as Chris’s journey to Solitary comes to a dramatic close.