This critical examination of two dystopian television series--Black Mirror and Electric Dreams--focuses on pop culture depictions of technology and its impact on human existence. Representations of a wide range of modern and futuristic technologies are explored, from early portrayals of artificial intelligence (Rossum's Universal Robots, 1921) to digital consciousness transference as envisioned in Black Mirror's "San Junipero." These representations reflect societal anxieties about unfettered technological development and how a world infused with invasive artificial intelligence might redefine life and death, power and control. The impact of social media platforms is considered in the contexts of modern-day communication and political manipulation.

Serial storytelling has the advantage of unlocking rather than simplifying the complexities of digital culture. With their worldbuilding potential, TV series open up new artistic horizons, particularly for the dystopian genre. Situated at the nexus of dystopia, complex TV, and a metamodern cultural logic, Dystopia on Demand: Technology, Digital Culture, and the Metamodern Quest in Complex Serial Dystopias offers readers novel insights into the dynamics of serial dystopias in the contemporary streaming landscape. Introducing the term 'complex serial dystopias' to describe series that allow audiences to engage with the dystopian premise from multiple angles, the book examines four Anglo-American series, including Black Mirror, Mr. Robot, Westworld, and Kiss Me First. The in-depth analyses trace the variety of ways in which these series offer critical reflections on the human-technology entanglement in digital culture.

Better Call Saul chronicles the transformation of a decent, likable guy named Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman, the morally bankrupt lawyer we met on Breaking Bad. Captivating and funny, the show provides far more than a few binge-watched hours of entertainment, raising questions about the legal system and human nature itself. Why You Better Call Saul: What Our Favorite TV Lawyer Says About Life, Love, and Scheming Your Way to Acquittal and a Large Cash Payout examines the many faces of our favorite fictional lawyer, as well as other characters in the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul universe: ls Saul Goodman a persona that Jimmy invents to attract a particular kind of client, or does he reflect Jimmy's true self? To what extent does Jimmy/Saul bend - or break - the rules to which attorneys are bound?What do Jimmy McGill and Mike Ehrmantraut have in common with Dexter Morgan? What do Jimmy's most important relationships teach us about the effect of outside influences on one's psyche? How do Saul Goodman and Walter White break free of societal constraints? How does Saul manipulate the media in order to promote his legal services? Is he defined by his tacky advertisements? And much more ... About the Author STEVEN KESLOWITZ is a practicing attorney and pop culture expert. He is the author of three other books - The World According to the Simpsons, The Tao of Jack Bauer, and From Poland to Brooklyn -- and several journal articles focused on the intersection of law and pop culture. Please visit his website at StevenKeslowitz.com

The first official companion to the Emmy-winning Netflix cult-hit sci-fi television series that's fascinated millions of fans worldwide, with stunning visuals and never before seen behind-the-scenes content What becomes of humanity when it's fed into the jaws of a hungry new digital machine? Discover the world of Black Mirror in this immersive, illustrated, oral history. This first official book logs the entire Black Mirror journey, from its origins in creator Charlie Brooker's mind to its current status as one of the biggest cult TV shows to emerge from the UK. Alongside a collection of astonishing behind-the-scenes imagery and ephemera, Brooker and producer Annabel Jones will detail the creative genesis, inspiration, and thought process behind each film for the first time, while key actors, directors and other creative talents relive their own involvement.

This entertaining and informative book is a fun and intelligent look at how our society is reflected in the hit TV show The Simpsons, and how The Simpsons is reflected in society.

A dazzlingly original and ambitious book on the history of female self-portraiture by one of today's most well-respected art critics. Her story weaves in and out of time and place. She's Frida Kahlo, Loïs Mailou Jones and Amrita Sher-Gil en route to Mexico City, Paris or Bombay. She's Suzanne Valadon and Gwen John, craving city lights, the sea and solitude; she's Artemisia Gentileschi striding through the streets of Naples and Paula Modersohn-Becker in Worpswede. She's haunting museums in her paint-stained dress, scrutinising how El Greco or Titian or Van Dyck or Cézanne solved the problems that she too is facing. She's railing against her corsets, her chaperones, her husband and her brothers; she's hammering on doors, dreaming in her bedroom, working day and night in her studio. Despite the immense hurdles that have been placed in her way, she sits at her easel, picks up a mirror and paints a self-portrait because, as a subject, she is always available. Until the twentieth century, art history was, in the main, written by white men who tended to write about other white men. The idea that women in the West have always made art was rarely cited as a possibility. Yet they have - and, of course, continue to do so - often against tremendous odds, from laws and religion to the pressures of family and public disapproval. In The Mirror and the Palette, Jennifer Higgie introduces us to a cross-section of women artists who embody the fact that there is more than one way to understand our planet, more than one way to live in it and more than one way to make art about it. Spanning 500 years, biography and cultural history intertwine in a narrative packed with tales of rebellion, adventure, revolution, travel and tragedy enacted by women who turned their back on convention and lived lives of great resilience, creativity and bravery.

A detective hunts down a killer in a dystopian, overpopulated NYC in this classic science fiction novel that inspired the film Soylent Green. Originally published in 1966, Make Room! Make Room! imagines a world at the end of the twentieth century where Earth is so overwhelmed by rampant population growth that it teeters on the edge of self-destruction. In New York City alone, thirty-five million people are squeezed into its packed boroughs, scrambling like rats for the world’s dwindling resources. The only food available is a product called soylent. And while the government tries to maintain order, the rich get richer and the poor stay underfoot. Finding a killer in this broken world is one hell of a job. But that’s exactly what Det. Andy Rusch has been assigned to do. If he can stay alive long enough, he might just solve the biggest case he’s ever been on—unless humanity finally fulfills its promise and destroys itself first.

Spanish cartoonist Ana Galvañ charts an often-psychedelic and existential course for modernity in her English language debut, utilizing swaths of electric and florescent colors to create a series of short stories that intertwine and explore the dehumanizing effects of contemporary society. Like a candycolored collection of Black Mirror episodes, Galvañ’s world, set in the very near-future, is familiar and cautionary at once. Galvañ’s unwitting and addictive characters navigate a world of iridescent pastels and geometric energy like puppets. Departments of inhumane resources dehumanize the people it is purported to protect; information is determinedly mined like the gold of the 21st century that it is; induced suicidal thoughts are a tool to manage overpopulation. Galvañ’s near future is less paranoid dystopia than it is a logical extension of things to come, where the malice of large corporations manifests in small, everyday ways—real if a bit surreal at the same time.

On a planet where men are contained in ghettoised isolation, women enjoy the fruits of a queer matriarchal utopia -- until a boy escapes and a young woman's perception of the world is violently interupted. Two old friends enjoy cocktails on a holiday resort planet where all is not as it seems. A bickering couple emigrate to a world that has worked out an innovative way to side-step the need for war, only to bring their quarrels (and something far more destructive) with them. And in the title story, Suzuki offers readers a tragic and warped mirroring of her own final days as the tyranny of enforced screen-time and the mechanistion of labour bring about a shattering psychic collapse. At turns nonchalantly hip and charmingly deranged, Suzuki's singular slant on speculative fiction would be echoed in countless later works, from Margaret Atwood and Harumi Murakami, to Black Mirror and Ex Machina. In these darkly playful and punky stories, the fantastical elements are always earthed by the universal pettiness of strife between the sexes, and the gritty reality of life on the lower rungs, whatever planet that ladder might be on.

This magnetic set of scenes, characters, and icons allows you to create your own Bob's Burgers adventures Kit includes: 25 magnets featuring the Belcher family and all their favorite accessories Two-sided backdrop to build your Bob's Burgers scenes -- at the restaurant and on the street outside 48-page book featuring character profiles, quotes, and a directory of the names of both the restaurant burgers and the store next door, complete with full-color images