SYNOPSES OF THE MORE THAN 120 EPISODES OF THE PEABODY AWARD-WINNING TV SHOW.

The award-winning television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988-1999) has been described as "the smartest, funniest show in America," and forever changed the way we watch movies. The series featured a human host and a pair of robotic puppets who, while being subjected to some of the worst films ever made, provided ongoing hilarious and insightful commentary in a style popularly known as "riffing." These essays represent the first full-length scholarly analysis of Mystery Science Theater 3000--MST3K--which blossomed from humble beginnings as a Minnesota public-access television show into a cultural phenomenon on two major cable networks. The book includes interviews with series creator Joel Hodgson and cast members Kevin Murphy and Trace Beaulieu.

The hit Netflix show has come to comics! The riffing hilarity of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 comes to comics when Kinga Forrester pairs her Kingachrome Liquid Medium with her latest invention--the Bubbulat-R! Jonah Heston, Crow T. Robot, and Tom Servo find themselves thrust into the 2-D world of public domain comics, with riffing as their only defense! From its humble beginnings on a tiny mid-west TV station in 1988, through its years as a mainstay on The Comedy Channel/Comedy Central and the SciFi Channel all through the '90s, to its spectacular resurrection on Netflix in 2017, Mystery Science Theater 3000 has had a transformative effect on television, comedy, and the way old, cheesy movies are viewed. Now creator Joel Hodgson has set his sights on the comics medium, and the four-color pamphlets will never be the same!

A collection of science experiments exploring such topics as apples, blood, and feet smell.

Best loved and little-known recipes, from Boston to San Francisco and in between.

First broadcast in the not too distant past on a television station in Minnesota, Mystery Science Theater 3000 soon grew out of its humble beginnings and found a new home on cable television. This simple show about a man and two robots forced to watch bad movies became a cult classic, and episodes of the series continue to be packaged in DVD collections to this day. Before its final run, the show received Emmy nominations and a Peabody award for Television excellence, and in 2007, Time magazine declared MST3K one of “The 100 Best Shows of All-Time.” In Reading Mystery Science Theater 3000: Critical Approaches, Shelley S. Rees presents a collection of essays that examines the complex relationship between narrative and audience constructed by this baffling but beloved television show. Invoking literary theory, cultural criticism, pedagogy, feminist criticism, humor theory, rhetorical analysis, and film and media studies, these essays affirm the show’s narrative and rhetorical intricacy. The first section, “Rhetoric and the Empowered Audience,” addresses MST3K’s function as an exercise in rhetorical resistance. Part Two, “Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Genre,” analyzes MST3K through distinct generic traditions, including humor studies, traditional science fiction tropes, and the B-movie. Finally, the third section addresses postmodern and intertextual readings of the show. By providing an academic treatment of an iconic television phenomenon, these essays argue that Mystery Science Theater 3000 is worthy of serious scholarly attention. Though aimed at a discerning readership of academics, this collection will also appeal to the intellectual nature of the show’s well-educated audience.

The City of Chaos and Mayhem is set in St. Louis, Missouri, and features Kitty a 71-year-old feisty widow of a mobster named Vinny, Kitty is wild and free, rides a motorcycle, carries a stun gun, pepper spray, and her .45 caliber, and won’t hesitate to shoot you in the knee caps if you get in her way. The city is turned upside down looking for a key that Kitty is not aware of and can bring down the mob and drug lord. Everyone thinks Kitty has this key and there is a race against time to find it or her best friend Ginger who has been kidnapped will die. Kitty’s daughter Shiloh hires an ex-con to help get to the bottom of it all. Her son comes home from the war with a letter from his deceased father explaining everything. In the meantime, things start to heat up between the detective on the case and a jealous ex from the past.

Provides episode listings, cast and credits for both classic and obscure science fiction TV shows from the last fifty years

What if an aging, unsuccessful Minnesota author of history books with names like Old von Steuben Had a Farm: The German-American Settlement of the Midwest decided he could write a book every bit as vapid and ridiculous as the books that sold four hundred times more copies than his own? Well, he would write Death Rat, of course, the thrilling tale of a man who battles prejudice, his inner demons, and a cunning six-foot-long rat. And what if he was told by publishers that, at sixty years of age, though his book was a thrilling read, he just didn’t look the part of a virile writer of gripping adventure books featuring cunning six-foot-long rats? Well, he would cook up a scheme so outrageous, it would incur the wrath of Gus Bromstad, the beloved author of the homespun Dogwood Downs series of books. And it would stir up the bizarre religious fervor of King Leo, the libidinous funk superstar whose CD “LoveDeathTomorrowJelly” was one of the biggest sellers of the decade. And it would throw him into a strange symbiotic relationship with the entire town of Holey, Minnesota, population 38. Such is the fate of one Pontius Feeb, the hapless author of Death Rat. . . and perhaps the fate of all who attempt to write gripping novels featuring cunning six-foot-long rats.