Shark Sex, mutant cats, and strange sexually transmitted diseases. Over the past few decades, sexually transmitted diseases have evolved in unusual ways. Herpes, AIDS, Gonorrhea; these are all STDs of the past. These days, sexually transmitted diseases are more extreme and bizarre. Not exactly diseases anymore, they are more like sexually transmitted body modifications. There's an STD that changes your hair color, an STD that causes your toes to grow larger, one causes you to grow extra breasts on your body, another causes your skin to grow long metal spikes, and there's an especially annoying STD that causes you to ejaculate miniature eyeballs. Tonight is Share Your STD Night at the Demon Seed Swingers Club. Although most members of society fear the idea of contracting these diseases, there are some underground deviants who embrace them. They believe the diseases make them strange, unique, and beautiful. So they come together once a month to trade their wonderful STDs with each other in a surreal, fantastical orgy. However, tonight will not be like other nights. There's a new disease spreading through the sex club, a disease that causes people to become rabid bloodthirsty killing machines. As the infected rampage through the Demon Seed, the survivors realize there's only one thing they can do to survive the night: turn their grotesque STDs into deadly super weapons. Also featuring the short stories: "Candy-Coated" - A buff dude with a lollipop for a head has a hard time picking up the laydaaays due to all of the bearded truckers who keep trying to lick his head. "Ear Cat" - A Kitty of the Month Club selection gone horribly, horribly wrong. "City Hobgoblins" - A member of a punk rock band falls in love with a shark-like creature. (a prequel to the cult novel Satan Burger) "Porno in August" - A group of porn actors find themselves floating in the middle of the ocean, unable to remember who they are or why they are there. (Chosen for The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror)

This is a textual, bibliographical and cultural study of 60 years of Bradbury's fiction. The authors draw upon correspondence with his publishers, agents and friends, as well as archival manuscripts, to examine the story of Bradbury's authorship over more than half a century.

Although he is most remembered for his vast collection of science fiction memorabilia; his influential magazine, Famous Monsters of Filmland; and his frequent sci-fi convention appearances, Forrest J Ackerman (1916-2008) also left a sizeable body of work in print. An introductory biographical section traces Ackerman's early enthusiasm for pulp magazines and film productions of a fantastic nature, his rise to prominence in "fandom," his acquisition of memorabilia, his work as a literary agent, the founding of his landmark magazine in 1958, and his friendship with a number of performers and personnel from genre films. The extensive bibliography includes listings of books, published letters, articles, fiction, verse, speeches, screenplays, comics, discography, liner notes, and periodicals edited and published by Ackerman. A thorough filmography, a selected listing of nationally televised appearances, and rare photographs of Ackerman throughout his lifetime complete this definitive catalog of one of science fiction's most interesting personalities.

Ride the Creepbus and enjoy five horrific stories and then hope your soul is pure enough for the driver to let you off the Creepbus before it reaches its final destination. The Promise-- When 2 robbers try and rob a bank manager he takes them to a haunted house claiming he has millions hidden there. Our robbers get much more than they bargained for. Devil's Little Acre-- When Hugh Blakely inherits a cabin from his late uncle, the lawyer informs him it's haunted at night because the former owner was murdered and the murderer was never brough to justice. Hugh, not believing it, takes his fiancee there anyway. They discover things they wouldn't believe possible. Do they escape the curse? Read on.... Free As A Bird-- Al Janis cons a rich woman into marrying him. But then she makes him sign a prenup. Al wants the money, but he doesn't want to stay married to the ugly woman that keeps an Aviary full of nasty smelly birds. Al Janis does end up Free As A Bird, but maybe not exactly the way he wanted... Touchy Feely-- Detective Mitch Maxwell takes on a client who needs protection from her brother-in-law. In the course of this, he encounters a touchy feely ghost. Does he solve the mystery.? You'll see... Vengeance Of The Sea--Mack Samson and His Captain both want the same barmaid. They fight and the Captain ends up overboard, never to be seen again. The barmaid then wants nothing more to do with Mack. He keeps seeing his rival's ghost, covered in seaweed and rotting flesh. He becomes Captain of the whaling ship, but sightings of his former Captain's ghost and storms coming up out of nowhere plague him. The sailor's want nothing to do with him. He can no longer get a job on a whaling boat. One day he's offered a job as Captain of a not so honest enterprise. This is where he meets the vengeance of the sea for a final time.

Walter M. Miller, Jr., was one of the twentieth century's leading science fiction writers, a two-time Hugo Award winner and author of the classic novels A Canticle for Leibowitz and Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman. This comprehensive literary guide provides more than 1,500 alphabetically arranged entries on Miller's life and body of work. It includes summaries of his two novels and all of his shorter works, character descriptions, explanations of the literary, cultural, historical, and religious allusions found in the works, as well as translations of all foreign words and phrases. This guide is meant to inform both scholarly and popular readings of Miller's work.

The Fantastic Other is a carefully assembled collection of essays on the increasingly significant question of alterity in modern fantasy, the ways in which the understanding and construction of the Other shapes both our art and our imagination. The collection takes a unique perspective, seeing alterity not merely as a social issue but as a biological one. Our fifteen essays cover the problems posed by the Other, which, after all, go well beyond the bounds of any single critical perspective. With this in mind, we have selected studies to show how insights from deconstruction, Marxism, feminism, and Freudian, Jungian and evolutionary psychology help us understand an issue so central to the act of reading.

This photocopiable book provides a resource for the Literacy Hour, the National Curriculum for English and the Scottish Guidelines for English Language 5-14. Covering the key requirements for text-level work (comprehension and composition), it provides sections of structured lesson-plans on the main genres (narrative, non-fiction, poetry and plays), 90 linked copymasters which include extracts from books and poems, continuing and end-of-section assessments, and National Literacy Strategy and Scotland 5-14 planners.

The first dedicated exploration of the short fiction of Shirley Jackson for three decades, this volume takes an in-depth look at the themes and legacies of her 200-plus short stories. Recognized as the mother of contemporary horror, scholars from across the globe, and from a range of different disciplinary backgrounds, dig into the lasting impact of her work in light of its increasing relevance to contemporary critical preoccupations and the re-release of Jackson's work in 2016. Offering new methodologies to study her work, this volume calls upon ideas of intertextuality, ecocriticism and psychoanalysis to examine a broad range of themes from national identity, race, gender and class to domesticity, the occult, selfhood and mental illness. With consideration of her blockbuster works alongside later works that received much less critical attention, Shirley Jackson's Dark Tales promises a rich and dynamic expansion on previous scholarship of Jackson's oeuvre, both bringing her writing into the contemporary conversation, and ensuring her place in the canon of Horror fiction.

This literary companion surveys the young adult works of American author Marion Zimmer Bradley, primarily known for her work in the fantasy genre. An A to Z arrangement includes coverage of novels (The Catch Trap, Survey Ship, The Fall of Atlantis, The Firebrand, The Forest House and The Mists of Avalon), the graphic narrative Warrior Woman, the Lythande novella The Gratitude of Kings, and, from the Darkover series, The Shattered Chain, The Sword of Aldones and Traitor's Sun. Separate entries on dominant themes--rape, divination, religion, violence, womanhood, adaptation and dreams--comb stories and longer works for the author's insights about the motivation of institutions that oppress marginalized groups, especially women.