Störfall

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Amit Goswami, with Maggie Goswami

You may not qualify as a scientist, but you love reading science fiction and are intrigued by problems of time, space, mind, and reality. You'd like nothing better than to explore the solar system, travel to the stars, and really penetrate the mysteries of hyperspace, curved space, black holes, and supernovae. The Cosmic Dancers will take you through the most challenging concepts of modern physics with the aid of examples from such masters of science fiction as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Silverberg, and Ursula K. Le Guin, not to mention their predecessors H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Cyrano de Bergerac.

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Ann Gaylin

"Eavesdropping in the Novel from Austen to Proust investigates human curiosity and its representation in eavesdropping scenes in nineteenth-century English and French novels. Ann Gaylin argues that eavesdropping dramatizes a primal human urge to know, and offers a paradigm of narrative transmission and reception of information among characters, narrators, and readers. Gaylin sheds light on the social and psychological effects of the nineteenth-century rise of information technology and accelerated flow of information, as manifested in the anxieties about - and delight in - displays of private life and its secrets. Analyzing eavesdropping in Austen, Balzac, Dickens, Collins, and Proust, she demonstrates the flexibility of the scene to produce narrative complication or resolution, to foreground questions of gender and narrative agency, and to place the debate of privacy and publicity within the literal and metaphoric spaces of the nineteenth-century novel. This innovative study will be of interest to scholars of nineteenth-century English and European literature."--Jacket.

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Glenn Kay and Michael Rose

Complete with a foreword by Mike Nelson, host of Mystery Science Theater 3000, this dynamic guide to one of Hollywood's most popular and enduring genres provides a history of the disaster genre, descriptions of its trends and unusual traits, portraits of famous stars, and reviews of more than 150 disaster movies. The films reviewed include everything from famous titles such as The Poseidon Adventure, Titanic, and The Towering Inferno to more obscure movies such as The Night the World Exploded, Terror on the 40th Floor, and War Between the Planets. Casual disaster-movie fans, as well as die-hard lovers of the genre will benefit from the rating system, which ranges from "Highly Recommended" to "Avoid at All Costs," and the dubious "Recommended for All the Wrong Reasons."

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Tom Weaver

These men and women saved the planet from aliens, behemoths, monsters, zombies, and other bloated, stumbling threats--in the movies, at least--and now they tell their stories. Julie Adams, John Agar, Richard Anderson, John Archer, Jeanne Bates, Billy Benedict, Turhan Bey, Lloyd Bridges, Ricou Browning, Robert Cornthwaite, Louise Currie, Richard Denning, Anne Francis, Mark Goddard, June Lockhart, Eugene Lourie, Jeff Morrow, Lori Nelson, Rex Reason, William Schallert, Don Taylor, George Wallace and Jane Wyatt give behind-the-scenes insights into such classic movies as Creature from the Black Lagoon, Forbidden Planet, Destination Moon and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. They also discuss the impact "monster-fighting" had on their careers and what they are now doing. Some interviews were previously published in different form in fan magazines.