From National Book Award nominee Chris Lynch, the second action-and-humor-filled futuristic series about talking pets who are tired of being pets ... and the boy who must help them. Zane has made an enemy for life in the evil scientist Dr. Gristle. Not only is Gristle angry about the damage Zane has done to his reputation, he's also extraordinarily jealous of Zane's ability to use technology to talk to animals. The result? He's now working on a new device to control animals' movements and speech - and Zane's dog, Hugo, is one of the first targets.
*From National Book Award nominee Chris Lynch* Zane's wired life is about to be unplugged. . . Zane lives a life of luxury in a completely wired world. He doesn't ever have to leave his building to have exciting (virtual) experiences. His room knows everything he eats and what he needs for school. Even his pet dog is wired. There's only one problem: When Zane gets a device that enables animals to talk to him, he finds out that his world is a lie. The animals don't want to be wired -- they want to rebel. And Zane's going to be a part of their revolution, whether he likes it or not. In the process, he'll have to enter a world he's never confronted before: Nature. Join award-winning author Chris Lynch on a nonstop adventure through a not-so-distant future, where one lone kid has to prove he can be an animal's best friend.
There's a revolution taking place. Few realise its implications - yet those who do are uniquely placed to experience extraordinary success. Those who taught us that hard work and a steady job were the secrets to success were merely repeating what had worked for them, without realising that the ground had shifted underneath them. With 'government guaranteed jobs' replaced by contracts, internet fortunes made overnight, marriages failing at a rate of one in three, average job placement for under 30s less than three years, 100-year-old institutions collapsing each day, and national economies in crisis... Nothing is the same as it was as far as getting what you want out of life is concerned.
Four incompetent cats hijack a giant killer robot to change the course of a war between cats, dogs, and insects. But while these three species fight for control of the world, a powerful mechanical being named GEAR arrives to risk his own life to save the lives of good cats. This printing has everything: robots, harpoon guns, talking cats, mantis kung fu, and pin-up art by ROB SCHRAB and MIKE MIGNOLA! Writer and artist DOUG TENNAPEL (Earthworm Jim) and colorist KATHERINE GARNER present an updated-but-faithful 20th ANNIVERSARY edition of GEAR, an Image Comics classic for cat, dog, and insect lovers of all ages!
Twenty-first-century private detective Conrad Metcalf has a dead doctor on his hands, a monkey on his back, and a kangaroo in his waiting room in a first novel with a sharp-edged, funny vision of the future.
Throughout the 1990s, this irrepressible, inexhaustible duo was a fixture on the New York comedy scene, cranking out material for "The New Yorker," the "Village Voice," and everyone in between. This work is a collection of their finest stuff from 1989-2004. All their hard-to-find magazine pieces are here, alongside their material for SNL and NPR.
This book addresses the question of what it might mean today to be a Luddite--that is, to take a stand against technology. Steven Jones here explains the history of the Luddites, British textile works who, from around 1811, proclaimed themselves followers of "Ned Ludd" and smashed machinery they saw as threatening their trade. Against Technology is not a history of the Luddites, but a history of an idea: how the activities of a group of British workers in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire came to stand for a global anti-technology philosophy, and how an anonymous collective movement came to be identified with an individualistic personal conviction. Angry textile workers in the early nineteenth century became romantic symbols of a desire for a simple life--certainly not the original goal of the actions for which they became famous. Against Technology is, in other words, a book about representations, about the image and the myth of the Luddites and how that myth was transformed over time into modern neo-Luddism.
Since the end of the Second World War—and particularly over the last decade—Japanese science fiction has strongly influenced global popular culture. Unlike American and British science fiction, its most popular examples have been visual—from Gojira (Godzilla) and Astro Boy in the 1950s and 1960s to the anime masterpieces Akira and Ghost in the Shell of the 1980s and 1990s—while little attention has been paid to a vibrant tradition of prose science fiction in Japan. Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams remedies this neglect with a rich exploration of the genre that connects prose science fiction to contemporary anime. Bringing together Western scholars and leading Japanese critics, this groundbreaking work traces the beginnings, evolution, and future direction of science fiction in Japan, its major schools and authors, cultural origins and relationship to its Western counterparts, the role of the genre in the formation of Japan’s national and political identity, and its unique fan culture. Covering a remarkable range of texts—from the 1930s fantastic detective fiction of Yumeno Kyûsaku to the cross-culturally produced and marketed film and video game franchise Final Fantasy—this book firmly establishes Japanese science fiction as a vital and exciting genre. Contributors: Hiroki Azuma; Hiroko Chiba, DePauw U; Naoki Chiba; William O. Gardner, Swarthmore College; Mari Kotani; Livia Monnet, U of Montreal; Miri Nakamura, Stanford U; Susan Napier, Tufts U; Sharalyn Orbaugh, U of British Columbia; Tamaki Saitô; Thomas Schnellbächer, Berlin Free U. Christopher Bolton is assistant professor of Japanese at Williams College. Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. is professor of English at DePauw University. Takayuki Tatsumi is professor of English at Keio University.
