What do Margot Kidder, Tom Cruise, Oliver Stone and Robert Mitchum have in common with author William Harrison? Its here in the pages of The Mutations of Rollerball: An inside view of the life of a writer whose career has spanned six decades and four continents, the madness of Hollywood, the evolution of academic writing programs, and all points in between.
If our near future sometimes feels like a dystopian sci-fi movie, that’s because it is. In Come With Me If You Want to Live: The Future as Foretold in Classic Sci-Fi Films, Michael Harris reveals the hidden-in-plain-sight meanings of the greatest science fiction films of the past fifty years, the ways in which they predicted the future that we are increasingly living in, but how we can still avoid the worst of what they warned us about. The 1970s saw the start of a new wave of science fiction that predicted environmental destruction, out-of-control technology, and escalating political crises. These were not the fantastical imaginings of filmmakers, they were based on rising environmental consciousness and solid scientific research. The explanation of why we didn’t heed these warnings might be the most important story of our time – and now our future. Each chapter focuses on a classic sci-fi film: among them Blade Runner, Terminator 2, 12 Monkeys, Brazil, , Soylent Green, and the Back to the Future series; these films are used to consider our likely environmental, technological, and political future. But taking sci-fi seriously again could help us to regain our power to create different tomorrows guided by practical utopianism, and to imagine new science fictions for a better world. If you’re wondering what the future holds, maybe you’ve already seen it.
A richly illustrated, encyclopedic deep dive into the history of roleplaying games. When Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson released Dungeons & Dragons in 1974, they created the first roleplaying game of all time. Little did they know that their humble box set of three small digest-sized booklets would spawn an entire industry practically overnight. In Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, Stu Horvath explores how the hobby of roleplaying games, commonly known as RPGs, blossomed out of an unlikely pop culture phenomenon and became a dominant gaming form by the 2010s. Going far beyond D&D, this heavily illustrated tome covers more than three hundred different RPGs that have been published in the last five decades. Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground features (among other things) bunnies, ghostbusters, soap operas, criminal bears, space monsters, political intrigue, vampires, romance, and, of course, some dungeons and dragons. In a decade-by-decade breakdown, Horvath chronicles how RPGs have evolved in the time between their inception and the present day, offering a deep and gratifying glimpse into a hobby that has changed the way we think about games and play.
A richly illustrated, encyclopedic deep dive into the history of roleplaying games. When Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson released Dungeons & Dragons in 1974, they created the first roleplaying game of all time. Little did they know that their humble box set of three small digest-sized booklets would spawn an entire industry practically overnight. In Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, Stu Horvath explores how the hobby of roleplaying games, commonly known as RPGs, blossomed out of an unlikely pop culture phenomenon and became a dominant gaming form by the 2010s. Going far beyond D&D, this heavily illustrated tome covers more than three hundred different RPGs that have been published in the last five decades. Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground features (among other things) bunnies, ghostbusters, soap operas, criminal bears, space monsters, political intrigue, vampires, romance, and, of course, some dungeons and dragons. In a decade-by-decade breakdown, Horvath chronicles how RPGs have evolved in the time between their inception and the present day, offering a deep and gratifying glimpse into a hobby that has changed the way we think about games and play. The deluxe edition will include a foil-stamped cover and slipcase with a cloth binding, a ribbon, gilded edges, and an 8.5x11-inch card stock poster of the regular edition.
An encyclopedic guide to the modern practices, techniques, and tactics used in preparing and trying cases, with model programs for the handling of all types of litigation.
Throughout its history, popular mass-mediated culture has turned its attention to representing and interrogating organizational life. As early as Charlie Chaplin’s cinematic classic Modern Times and as recently as the primetime television hit The Simpsons, we see cultural products that engage reflexively in coming to terms with the meaning of work, technology and workplace relations. It is only since the late 1990s, however, that those who research management and organizations have come to collectively dwell on the relationship between organizations and popular culture – a relationship where the cultural meanings of work are articulated in popular culture, and where popular culture challenges taken for granted knowledge about the structure and practice work. Key to this development has been the journal Culture and Organization – a journal that has been centre stage in creating new vistas through which the ‘cultural studies of organization’ can be explored. This book brings together the journal’s best contributions which specifically address how popular culture represents, informs and potentially transforms organizational practice. Featuring contributors from the UK, USA, Europe and Australia, this exciting anthology provides a comprehensive review of research in organization and popular culture.
