Allan B. Fredrickson’s grandparents, Nels and Augusta Larson, raised eighteen children on their homestead in the Turtle Mountains in northern North Dakota. Of the eight boys, six of them farmed in the area near Lake Metigoshe, north of Bottineau. Allan spent his summers working on their farms with most of his time working for his uncle Orlando (known as Orlan). Shortly after receiving his doctor’s degree in veterinary medicine from the University of Minnesota, he and his wife, Barbara, signed on as an associate with a veterinarian in Mount Vernon, Washington, where they reside to this day. ***** Nels and Augusta Larson had a 160-acre farm, and on it was a small clapboard house, a straw pole barn, a wooden grain bin, and a log chicken coop. The house had two rooms upstairs, which served as a bedroom for the ten girls and one for the eight boys. Their clothes were stored in open wooden boxes. Nels had a string of milk cows, beef cattle, and a few sheep and farmed with two teams of draft horses. ***** Orlan grew up knowing he would always be a dirt farmer and cattle rancher. After two divorces, he lost everything he owned or wanted and fell into a modest career of training and racing standardbred harness horses in California and Arizona. He lost contact with most of his family and died a lonely, broken-down man. 1

'A Robot shall not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm'. That's Asimov's celebrated First Law of Robotics. And in the 21st century, all domestic robots are programmed according to that Law. But something had gone terribly wrong with Tik-Tok's 'asimov circuits', and he sets out to injure as many people as possible - preferably fatally - while maintaining the exterior of a mild-mannered artist and a sincere campaigner for robot rights. So, like any self-respecting crook and murderer, he moves into politics, becoming the first robot candidate for Vice-President of the United States. Tik-Tok follows his maniacal progress from humble beginnings to the top of the heap - or almost. Because in his devious cunning, there was one element that Tik-Tok had forgotten... Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1983

This is the first major study in English of the work of the French novelist, essayist, journalist, poet and ‘chansonnier’ Pierre Mac Orlan (1882-1970). It assesses Mac Orlan's contribution to the post-1918 phenomenon of intellectual disillusionment and disorientation which was termed the ‘nouveau mal du siècle’, or ‘inquiétude’. Although he has largely been ignored by critics thus far, Mac Orlan was part of mainstream French literary production and a major exponent of ‘inquiétude’. Where he differs from his contemporaries is in his subject matter, in his use of sociological, rather than abstract, intellectual material. His expression of ‘inquiétude’ encompasses: ‘le fantastique social’; adventure; marginality; ‘le cafard’; and sadistic sexuality. His originality lies in his invention of ‘le fantastique social’, in his constant use of certain techniques, as well as the subject matter, of German Expressionism via the depiction of the disturbing landscape of the modern city, post-1918 inflation and decadence, prostitutes and criminals, doomed adventurers, the mystery of modern technology, and in the expression of a morbid interest in sexual violence. This volume will be of particular interest to students of inter-war French literature and thought.

Science fiction-roman.

Most studies of Renaissance patronage in the arts deal with a particular patron and the artists who worked for him. John R. Spencer reverses this approach by focusing on one fifteenth-century Florentine artist, Andrea del Castagno, and his patrons. Combining social and art history, Spencer casts new light on both the career of Castagno and on the nature of art patronage in the early Renaissance. Through careful and detailed archival research, Spencer creates a fascinating portrait of Castagno's patronage as a web, at the center of which was Cosimo de' Medici, who constituted the focal point of a network of business partnerships, real estate transactions, loans, and special privileges in which the artist's patrons were enmeshed. The author constructs partial biographies of unknown and lesser-known patrons to show the relation of these patrons to each other and to the artist, demonstrating the degree to which artistic production in Renaissance Italy was tied to politics and economics. Spencer discusses each of Castagno's extant and some of his lost paintings, dating the works with greater accuracy than ever before. His understanding of the patrons and of the motivations behind the commissions makes it possible for Spencer to bring new interpretations to many of these works. This book offers a deeper understanding of a particular artist's life and work while also exploring the larger question of the unique relationship between private patrons and independent artists in the Italian Renaissance.