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Science fiction, fantasy, comics, romance, genre movies, games all drain into the Cultural Gutter, a website dedicated to thoughtful articles about disreputable art-media and genres that are a little embarrassing. Irredeemable. Worthy of Note, but rolling like errant pennies back into the gutter. The Cultural Gutter is dangerous because we have a philosophy. We try to balance enthusiasm with clear-eyed, honest engagement with the material and with our readers. This book expands on our mission with 10 articles each from science fiction/fantasy editor James Schellenberg, comics editor and publisher Carol Borden, romance editor Chris Szego, screen editor Ian Driscoll and founding editor and former games editor Jim Munroe.
You go back far enough, every family’s got blood on its hands. Three miles down the Roman Line, you’ll find the old Corrigan house, empty for decades, the sight of an unspeakable crime that has been long forgotten. Until now, when a stranger rolls into town claiming to be a long lost Corrigan. Inviting the locals to a tour of the derelict property, the stranger regales the townsfolk with a gruesome tale of how his family was slaughtered by an armed mob. The murderers, he claims, were the ancestors of everyone assembled before him. Jeered as a fraud, the man’s claims are dismissed but doubts linger over what happened all those years ago. Dissent grows as the stranger agitates for retrib...
As a video game world faces virtual apocalypse, the Skids stop playing and start fighting for their lives in this award-winning debut young adult novel. They’re called the Skids. They’ve got three eyes, tank treads, and a bucket-full of attitude. They live to play the games, score points, and try to make the next level before getting vaped—all for the notion that someone out there must be watching. Johnny Drop’s the best skid the Skidsphere’s seen in generations, but he won’t get to enjoy it for long. Because his world is about to die. And then Johnny’s going to learn that the universe is larger than he ever dreamed. Part Hunger Games, part Ready Player One, and a bit of The Matrix smashed into the mix, The Skids is the Copper Cylinder Award–winning debut novel in the Skids Trilogy.
The conclusion of the epic sci-fi series, set in a world of cloning, artificial intelligence, and battles in a virtual realm . . . A new blood-transmitted virus has become a black market staple due to its rejuvenating effects, forcing infected “Eternals” into a tightly knit underground where they must hack the “V-net” for food and shelter. When the leader of the Eternals, Helena Sharp, begins to lose her immortality, she flees to an old lover for strength and solace, as the entire Eternal community is thrown into chaos. Meanwhile, young clone Niko discovers the truth about her gifted daughter—who carries the future heritage of humanity in her augmented DNA. This knowledge forces Ni...
A powerful young warrior must return to the perilous city she escaped years ago in the New York Times–bestselling author’s fantasy series debut. Seven years ago Kaylin fled the crime-riddled streets of Nightshade, knowing that something was after her. Children were being murdered—and every victim had the same odd markings that had mysteriously appeared on her own skin. . . . Since then, Kaylin has learned to read, she’s learned to fight, and she’s become one of the vaunted Hawks who patrol and police the City of Elantra. Alongside the winged Aerians and the immortal Barrani, she’s made a place for herself, far from the mean streets of her birth. But now children are dying once again. And a dark and familiar pattern is emerging. Kaylin is ordered back into Nightshade with a partner she knows she can’t trust, a dragon for a companion, and a device to contain her powers—powers that no other human has. Her task is simple—find the killer, stop the murders . . . and survive the attentions of those who claim to be her allies . . .
A nuanced story about artificial intelligence and digital immortality, Freenet plunges readers into the far future, when humans have closed distances in time and space through wormhole tunnels between interplanetary colonies. Consciousness has been digitized and cybersouls uploaded to a near-omniscient data matrix in a world where information is currency and the truth belongs to whoever has the most bandwidth. When Simara Ying crash-lands on the desert planet Bali, she finds herself trapped in a primitive cave-dwelling culture with no social network for support. Her native rescuer, Zen Valda, is yanked into a new universe of complications he can scarcely grasp and into an infinite network of data he never knew existed. When brash V-net anchorman Roni Hendrik starts investigating how Simara became the subject of an interplanetary manhunt, he finds a dangerous emergence in the network that threatens all human life. Freenet is an exciting new novel about the power of information, as well as the strength of love, in a post-digital age.
Seven corpses are discovered in the streets of a Dragon's fief. All identical, down to their clothing. Kaylin Neya is assigned to discover who they were, who killed them—and why. Is the evil lurking at the borders of Elantra preparing to cross over? At least the investigation delays her meeting with the Dragon Emperor. And as the shadows grow longer over the fiefs, Kaylin must use every skill she's ever learned to save the people she's sworn to protect. Sword in hand, dragons in the sky, this time there's no retreat and no surrender…
THE END OF HER JOURNEY IS ONLY THE BEGINNING… The Barrani would be happy to see her die. So Kaylin Neya is a bit surprised by her safe arrival in the West March. Especially when enemies new and old surround her and those she would call friends are equally dangerous… And then the real trouble starts. Kaylin's assignment is to be a "harmoniste"—one who helps tell the truth behind a Barrani Recitation. But in a land where words are more effective than weapons, Kaylin's duties are deadly. With the wrong phrase she could tear a people further asunder. And with the right ones…well, then she might be able to heal a blight on a race. If only she understood the story….
Originally published in 1947, this is Frederick Philip Grove's last and most unique book. In the tradition of Orwell's 'Animal Farm', Grove examines the idea of a utopian society through the story of a group of travelling ants who find themselves in North America. An amateur scientist encounters the colony and makes telepathic contact with a very special elder of the ant community. In fact, the ant infuses the scientist with her memory and uses her new friend as a medium through which she tells the colony's incredible story, a tale that holds up a mirror to our culture, demonstrating to both worlds the parallels and contrasts between the pastoral ways of the ants and the North American life of excess. This classic Canadian novel is back in print for the first time in 20 years, allowing readers to more completely assess Grove's body of works. Fans of speculative fiction will be delighted to see that his prose is as fresh as it was 50 years ago. This was Grove's last novel, and it stands as a testament both to his writing and his prescience.
It has been a busy few weeks for Private Kaylin Neya. In between angling for a promotion, sharing her room with the last living female Dragon and dealing with more refugees than anyone knew what to do with, the unusual egg she'd been given began to hatch. Actually, that turned out to be lucky, because it absorbed the energy from the bomb that went off in her quarters.… So now might be the perfect time to leave Elantra and journey to the West March with the Barrani. If not for the disappearances of citizens in the fief of Tiamaris—disappearances traced to the very Barrani Kaylin is about to be traveling with…