Author: Don D'Ammassa File Type: pdf From BooklistThe book is part of Facts On Files Literary Movements series, and it has its uses. It also has flaws that make it less useful than it might be. It is the work of one writer, who is described in promotional material as one of the worlds leading experts on contemporary science fiction and a writer of fiction and criticism. The prose is full of errors like muddling prophesy and prophecy.The work is alphabetical and combines articles on authors, novels, novellas, short stories, and series. A term in capitals in one article sends the reader to another. Articles range from a few paragraphs to a page or two. A glossary, a list of Hugo and Nebula Award winners, bibliographies of science fiction works and secondary sources, and an index complete the volume. Although the emphasis seems to be on British and American authors, there are entries for a few writers outside the English-speaking world. Coverage extends from Mary Shelleys Frankenstein to the present. Since the emphasis is on science fiction as literature, this volume does not have the broad coverage of the field found in John Clute and Peter Nicholls Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (St. Martins, 1993). Terms related to themes and to subgenres, such as cyber punk, hard science fiction, and military science fiction, are defined in the glossary instead of being treated as main entries. The author includes some writers not generally associated with science fiction but has some curious omissions, including Karel Capeks R.U.R., which gave us the term robot, and Mary Doria Russells The Sparrow and Children of God. Information about authors lives is cursory at best someone looking for biographical information would do better with resources such as Gales Contemporary Authors or Dictionary of Literary Biography series. Librarians will want to keep in mind this volumes narrow focus when considering purchase. Libraries with extensive science fiction criticism sections may find it useful. Kathleen Stipek American Library Association. lt

Author: Peter Block File Type: pdf Our seduction into beliefs in competition, scarcity, and acquisition are producing too many casualties. We need to depart a kingdom that creates isolation, polarized debate, an exhausted planet, and violence that comes with the will to empire. The abbreviation of this empire is called a consumer culture. We think the free market ideology that surrounds us is true and inevitable and represents progress. We are called to better adapt, be more agile, more lean, more schooled, more, more, more. Give it up. There is no such thing as customer satisfaction. We need a new narrative, a shift in our thinking and speaking. An Other Kingdom takes us out of a culture of addictive consumption into a place where life is ours to create together. This satisfying way depends upon a neighborly covenantan agreement that we together, will better raise our children, be healthy, be connected, be safe, and provide a livelihood. The neighborly covenant has a different language than market-hype. It speaks instead in a sacred tongue. Authors Peter Block, Walter Brueggemann, and John McKnight invite you on a journey of departure from our consumer market culture, with its constellations of empire and control. Discover an alternative set of beliefs that have the capacity to evoke a culture where poverty, violence, and shrinking well-being are not inevitablea culture in which the social order produces enough for all. They ask you to consider this other kingdom. To participate in this modern exodus towards a modern community. To awaken its beginnings are all around us. An Other Kingdom outlines this journey to construct a future outside the systems world of solutions.

Author: Richard Power Sayeed File Type: pdf span orphans 2 widows 2Spice Girl Geri Halliwell dressed in a Union Jack, Prime Minister Tony Blair posing with Noel Gallagher of Oasis at No. 10, and a nation united in mourning for Princess Diana. These are the images that have come to define Britain in the pivotal year of 1997. In hindsight, the year is now remembered by many as a time of optimism and vibrancy, quickly lost. It symbolized a time when it seemed like Britain was becoming a more tolerant, cosmopolitan, freer, and more equitable country. So what happened?spanspan orphans 2 widows 2spanbr margin padding orphans 2 widows 2span orphans 2 widows 2Richard Power Sayeed has set out to find where the hope of the late 90s was lost. Inspanspan orphans 2 widows 21997 The Future that Never Happenedspanspan orphans 2 widows 2, he offers an evocative portrait of an era too quickly put into the past. Sayeed cuts through the nostalgia to show how many of the crises afflicting Britain today, actually had their roots in that crucial year. For example, the rise of New Labour masked the steady creep of British politics towards the right, while the Stephen Lawrence inquest exposed the tenacity of racism in both British society and the state, foreshadowing the widespread hate crimes of today. Far from being the crowning height of Britains cool, Sayeed instead sees 1997 as a missed opportunity, a turning point when there was a chance to genuinely transform British culture and society that was sadly lost.spanbr margin padding orphans 2 widows 2br margin padding orphans 2 widows 2span orphans 2 widows 2Providing an in-depth account of crucial events, while looking beyond politics to consider the role of music, art and popular culture, Sayeed powerfully traces Britains current malaise back to its origins.span p Segoe UI, serif 13px**h3 Segoe UI, serif 13pxReviewp Segoe UI, serif 13pxA beautifully written, brilliantly insightful account of New Labours Britainand fundamental to our understanding of how this country ended up in this mess.p Segoe UI, serif 13px(Owen Jones, columnist) p Segoe UI, serif 13pxA dazzling, funny, and impressively detailed analysis of one of the most important years in modern British history. Both nostalgic and deeply critical, this book casts 1997 in an entirely new light and is vital for anybody hoping to understand how a once-triumphant and optimistic nation became so polarised, and its politics so volatile.p Segoe UI, serif 13px(Ellie Mae OHagan, openDemocracy) p Segoe UI, serif 13pxRichard Power Sayeed has vividly reprised the year 1997, when radical currents flowed into the mainstream, and the authorities welcomed moderate reforms with satisfied contentment. Such promisebut what did it deliver?p Segoe UI, serif 13px(Andy McSmith, author of No Such Thing as Society A History of Britain in the 1980s) h3 Segoe UI, serif 13pxAbout the Authorp Segoe UI, serif 13px p Segoe UI, serif 13pxRichard Power Sayeed is a writer and filmmaker based in London.

Author: Sunhee Kim Gertz File Type: pdf Reading semiotically against the backdrop of medieval mirrors of princes, Arthurian narratives, and chronicles, this study examines how Rene dAnjou (1409-1480), Geoffrey Chaucers House of Fame (ca. 1375-1380), and Edward the Black Prince (1330-1376) explore fames visual power. While very different in approach, all three individuals reject the classical suggestion that fame is bestowed and understand that particularly in positions of leadership, it is necessary to communicate effectively with audiences in order to secure fame. This sweeping study sheds light on fames intoxicating but deceptively simple promise of elite glory.ReviewGertz is a true comparatist. Basing her work on semiotic principles enunciated by Maria Corti, Umberto Eco, and Roman Jakobson, Gertz brings together the three major figures of this book, Rene dAnjou, Chaucer, and the father of Richard II, in ways that continually surprise us. The binding elements are visual power and fame, united in the figure of a leader who rules for the good of all with persuasive eloquence and vision. Gertz presents us with three individuals who, already having acquired fame, ask why such prominence is unable to explain or justify so much of what is important to humanity. Gertzs book itself thus becomes a meaningful meditation on the elusive and enigmatic goddess of Fame.David Bevington, Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, University of ChicagoGertz explores what she terms the iconic myth of fame in three central works from the late medieval period in English and French. Relying on her firm command of medieval rhetorical theory and current semiotic theory, and with a broad range of primary works in the Middle Ages, she analyses narratives in the Furstenspiegel, or mirror for princes, tradition. Separate chapters delve into depiction of fame in the past, problematic issues arising in the present and future promise of fame. The approach and methodology provide in-depth readings of written and visual sources that are a model for study of the important, but chaotic, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The book makes, therefore, a fundamental contribution to the growing interest in late medieval literature, especially in French.Douglas Kelly, Professor Emeritus of French and Medieval Studies, University of Wisconsin-MadisonThis is a remarkable, far-reaching, mature work by a profoundly learned scholar. It investigates the links between narrative, visual communication, performance, power, political leadership and fame, bringing contemporary semiotic theory, reflections on contemporary political practices, and the lessons of medieval mirrors of princes to bear on the careers, performances, and writings of three immensely significant figures of the later Middle Ages. It should be of great interest to a wide range of medievalists. It is a truly original and thought-provoking book.Jeff Rider, Professor of Romance Languages & Literatures, Chair of the Medieval Studies program, Wesleyan UniversityAbout the AuthorSunHee Kim Gertz is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in English at Clark University. She is the editor, with Jaan Valsiner and Jean-Paul Breaux, of Semiotic Rotations Modes of Meanings in Cultural Worlds and the author of Poetic Prologues Medieval Conversations with the Literary Past, Chaucer to Shakespeare, 1337-1580, and Echoes and Reflections Memory and Memorials in Ovid and Marie de France.