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Includes chapters on L. Frank Baum and Ursula Le Guin, with material on Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, James Branch Cabell, H. P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, Edward Eager, and James Thurber, among others.
In America Noir David Cochran details how ten writers and filmmakers challenged the social pieties prevalent during the Cold War, such as the superiority of the American democracy, the benevolence of free enterprise, and the sanctity of the suburban family. Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone featured victims of vast, faceless, bureaucratic powers. Jim Thompson's noir thrillers, such as The Grifters, portrayed the ravages of capitalism on those at the bottom of the social ladder. Patricia Highsmith, in The Talented Mr. Ripley, placed an amoral con man in an international setting, implicitly questioning America's fitness as leader of the free world. Charles Willeford's pulp novels, such as Wild Wives and Woman Chaser, depicted the family as a hotbed of violence and chaos. These artists pioneered a detached, ironic sensibility that radically juxtaposed cultural references and blurred the distinctions between “high” and “low” art. Their refusal to surrender to the pressures for political conformity and their unflinching portrayal of the underside of American life paved the way for the emergence of a 1960s counterculture that forever changed the way America views itself.
Flint Lights the Way to Adventure! New York Times best-seller, master-class alternate historian, and creator of the "Ring of Fire" saga Eric Flint delivers an explosion of tales filled with well-turned action, wit and wonder. First: a heart-wrenching saga of love, guts and daring as a husband and wife, forced into an arranged marriage, fall in love for the first time while fighting their way toward one another in the midst of an alternate Roman war. Flint follows with stories set in David Weber's legendary "Honorverse" and Flint's own "1632" series. It's all topped with the gem of a tongue-in-cheek sword and sorcery novella (and Writer's of the Future grand prize winner) that first announced Eric Flint's arrival on the SF scene like a cannon-shot a dawn! At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).
Literary critics and scholars have written extensively on the demise of the "utopian spirit" in the modern novel. What has often been overlooked is the emergence of a new hybrid subgenre, particularly in science fiction and fantasy, which incorporates utopian strategies within the dystopian narrative, particularly in the feminist dystopias of the 1980s and 1990s. The author names this new subgenre "transgressive utopian dystopias." Suzette Haden Elgin's Native Tongue trilogy, Suzy McKee Charna's Holdfast series, and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale are thoroughly analyzed within the context of this this new subgenre of "transgressive utopian dystopias." Analysis focuses particularly on how these works cover the interrelated categories of gender, race and class, along with their relationship to classic literary dualism and the dystopian narrative. Without completely dissolving the dualistic order, the feminist dystopias studied here contest the notions of unambiguity and authenticity that are generally part of the canon.
A compilation of urban fantasy tales by some of the genre's leading practitioners features works by Roberta Gellis, Dave Freer and Eric Flint, Diana Paxson, Mercedes Lackey, and Rosemary Edghill.
Return to the alternate universe of "1632"and "1633" with the top writers of alternate history and military SF. Includes stories by David Weber, Mercedes Lackey, and S.L. Viehl.
Sixteen spine-tingling tales from the dark side of our nation's literary history include "The Gray Champion" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Ligeia" by Edgar Allan Poe, plus fables by Sarah Orne Jewett, Henry James, Mark Twain, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Ambrose Bierce, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Frank R. Stockton, Parke Godwin, and others.