Sleek androids have spread slowly through the galaxy, threatening human dominance, until a small band of rebels rise up against the humanoid tide.

Ecologies of Affect offers a synthetic introduction to the felt dynamics of cities and the character of places. The contributors capture the significance of affects including desire, nostalgia, memory, and hope in forming the identity and tone of places. The critical intervention this collection of essays makes is an active, consistent engagement with the virtualities that produce and refract our idealized attachments to place. Contributors show how place images, and attempts to build communities, are, rather than abstractions, fundamentally tied to and revolve around such intangibles. We understand nostalgia, desire, and hope as virtual; that is, even though they are not material, they are nevertheless real and must be accounted for. In this book, the authors take up affect, emotion, and emplacement and consider them in relation to one another and how they work to produce and are produced by certain temporal and spatial dimensions. The aim of the book is to inspire readers to consider space and place beyond their material properties and attend to the imaginary places and ideals that underpin and produce material places and social spaces. This collection will be useful to practitioners and students seeking to understand the power of affect and the importance of virtualities within contemporary societies, where intangible goods have taken on an increasing value.

Modern humanity with some 5,000 years of recorded history has been experiencing growing pains, with no end in sight. It is high time for humanity to grow up and to transcend itself by embracing transhumanism. Transhumanism offers the most inclusive ideology for all ethnicities and races, the religious and the atheists, conservatives and liberals, the young and the old regardless of socioeconomic status, gender identity, or any other individual qualities. This book expounds on contemporary views and practical advice from more than 70 transhumanists. Astronaut Neil Armstrong said on the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” Transhumanism is the next logical step in the evolution of humankind, and it is the existential solution to the long-term survival of the human race.

Currently, science fiction in all its forms is enjoying enormous popular interest. There can be no doubt that science fiction books and films have great influence on the public view of science and scientists. Close Encounters? examines the historical development of science fiction as a genre in books and films, tracing its roots, examining its most common ideas, exploring its relationship to "real" science, and attempting to assess its cultural impact. Discussion focuses on major themes such as time travel, politics, religion, ecology, and disasters. The authors consider the science in science fiction, the images of scientists that science fiction conveys, and some of the political, religious, and social motifs prominent in science fiction. They also discuss pseudo-science and its growing influence on the public perception of science. This fascinating, thought-provoking study should be read by all those interested in how the nature of science and its role in our society is portrayed in science fiction.

Caitlin R. Kiernan is at the forefront of contemporary gothic, weird and science fiction literature. She has written more than a dozen novels, over 250 short stories, many chapbooks, along with a large number of graphic works. For these Kiernan has won numerous awards. This first full-length look at Kiernan's body of work explores her fictional universe through critical literary lenses to show the depth of her contributions to modern genre literature. A prolific and creative writer, Kiernan's fictions bring to life our fears about the other, the unknown, and the future through stories that range widely across time and space. A sense of dark terror pervades her novels and stories. Yet Kiernan's fictional universe is not disengaged from reality. That is because she works within the long tradition of gothic fiction speaking to the gravest ethical, social and cultural issues. In her dark fiction, Kiernan illustrates the terror of the tyranny of the normal, the oppression of marginalized people, and the pervasive violence of our time. Her dystopian sf propels today's dangerous economic, social, political and environmental tendencies into the future. Kiernan's fiction portrays troubling truths about the current human condition.

The editor posed two questions regarding the future of the space program, and large corporations and society, to 22 science fiction writers: Poul Anderson, Mildred Downey Broxon, Octavia E. Butler, C. J. Cherryh, Gordon R. Dickson, Raymond Z. Gallun, James Gunn, Isidore Haiblum, James P. Hogan, Robert A. W. Lowndes, Richard A. Lupoff, Larry Niven, Charles Sheffield, Robert Silverberg, Jack Vance, A. E. van Vogt, John Varley, Joan D. Vinge, Jack Williamson, Robert Anton Wilson, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and Roger Zelazny. Their answers were--and are--fascinating, informative, and entertaining.

Who is the child of the night? That's what small-town reported Will Barbee must find out. Inexorably drawn into investigating a rash of grisly deaths, he soon finds himself embroiled in something far beyond mortal understanding. Doggedly pursuing his investigations, he meets the mysterious and seductive April Bell and starts having disturbing, tantalizing dreams in which he does terrible things--things that are stranger and wilder than his worst nightmares. then his friends being dying one by one and he slowly realizes that an unspeakable evil has been unleashed. As Barbee's world crumbles around him in a dizzying blizzard of madness, the intoxicating, dangerous April pushes Barbee ever closer to the answer to the question "Who is the Child of Night?" When Barbee finds out, he'll wish he'd never been born.

Understand Video Games as Works of Science Fiction and Interactive Stories Science Fiction Video Games focuses on games that are part of the science fiction genre, rather than set in magical milieux or exaggerated versions of our own world. Unlike many existing books and websites that cover some of the same material, this book emphasizes critical a

The purpose of this book is to initiate a new discussion on liberty focusing on the infinite realms of space. The discussion of the nature of liberty and what it means for a human to be free has occupied the minds of thinkers since the Enlightenment. However, without exception, every one of these discussions has focused on the character of liberty on the Earth. The emergence of human space exploration programs in the last 40-50 years raise a fundamental and new question: what will be the future of liberty in space? This book takes the discussion of liberty into the extraterrestrial environment. In this book, new questions will be addressed such as: Can a person be free when the oxygen the individual breathes is the result of a manufacturing process controlled by someone else? Will the interdependence required to survive in the extremities of the extraterrestrial environment destroy individualism? What are the obligations of the individual to the extraterrestrial state? How can we talk of extraterrestrial liberty when everyone is dependent on survival systems?