Monster Trek

In Monster Trek, Joe Gisondi brings to life the celebrities in bigfoot culture: people such as Matt Moneymaker, Jeff Meldrum, and Cliff Barackman, who explore remote wooded areas of the country for weeks at a time and spend thousands of dollars on infrared imagers, cameras, and high-end camping equipment. Pursuing the answer to why these seekers of bigfoot do what they do, Gisondi brings to the reader their most interesting-and in many cases, harrowing-expeditions.

Bigfoot sightings have been reported in every state except Hawaii. Interest in this creature, which many believe to be as mythical as a leprechaun, is as strong today as ever, with the wildly popular show Finding Bigfoot persisting on the Animal Planet network and references to bigfoot appearing throughout popular culture. What is it about bigfoot that causes some people to devote a chunk of their lives to finding one? In Monster Trek, Joe Gisondi brings to life the celebrities in bigfoot culture: people such as Matt Moneymaker, Jeff Meldrum, and Cliff Barackman, who explore remote wooded areas of the country for weeks at a time and spend thousands of dollars on infrared imagers, cameras, and high-end camping equipment. Pursuing the answer to why these seekers of bigfoot do what they do, Gisondi brings to the reader their most interesting--and in many cases, harrowing--expeditions. Gisondi travels to eight locations across the country, trekking into swamps, mountains, state parks, and remote woods with people in search of bigfoot as well as fame, fortune, adventure, and shared camaraderie. Many of the people who look for bigfoot, however, go counter to stereotypes and include teachers, engineers, and bankers. Some are private and guarded about their explorations, seeking solitude during a deeply personal quest. While there are those who might arguably be labeled "crazy," Gisondi discovers that the bigfoot research network is far bigger and more diverse than he ever imagined.

The story of Star Trek's resurrection between the 1969 cancellation of the original series and the 1979 release of Robert Wise's Star Trek--The Motion Picture, has become legend and like so many other legends, it tends to get printed instead of the facts. Drawing on hundreds of contemporary news articles and primary sources not seen in decades, this book tells the true story of the first successful Star Trek revival. After several attempts to relaunch the franchise, ST--TMP was released on a wave of prestige promotion, hype, and public frenzy unheard of for a film based on a television show. Controversy surrounded its troubled production and $44M budget, earning it a reputation at the time as the most expensive movie ever made. After a black-tie premiere in Washington, D.C., its opening in 856 North American theaters broke multiple box-office records--a harbinger of the modern blockbuster era. Despite immediate financial success, the film was panned by both critics and the public, leaving this enterprise nowhere to boldly go but down.

It's all been building to this! The Judge has hunted down the Dawn, and now it's a desperate fight for survival. Cola and Tug are each faced with heart-breaking decisions. Will they act in time? It's the bloodiest, most grueling battle yet and the skies will rain with blood!

The alien creatures on the Star Trek series are discussed.

This is a critical overview of monster magazines from the 1950s through the 1970s. "Monster magazine" is a blanket term to describe both magazines that focus primarily on popular horror movies and magazines that contain stories featuring monsters, both of which are illustrated in comic book style and printed in black and white. The book describes the rise and fall of these magazines, examining the contributions of Marvel Comics and several other well-known companies, as well as evaluating the effect of the Comics Code Authority on both present and future efforts in the field. It identifies several sub-genres, including monster movies, zombies, vampires, sword-and-sorcery, and pulp-style fiction. The work includes several indexes and technical credits.

Somewhere on the South African veld, 1901: At the height of the Boer War, a doctor at a British concentration camp conducts a series of grim experiments on Boer prisoners. His work ends in chaos, but two children survive: a boy named Benjamin, and a girl named Tessa … One hundred years later, a disgraced young police constable is reassigned to the sleepy South African town of Unie, where she makes a terrifying discovery: the body of a woman, burned beyond recognition. The crime soon leads her into her country's violent past—a past that includes her father, a high-ranking police official under the apartheid regime, and the children left behind in that long ago concentration camp. Michelle Pretorius’s epic debut weaves present and past together into a hugely suspenseful, masterfully plotted thriller that calls to mind Lauren Beukes’s The Shining Girls and Tana French’s The Secret Place. With an explosive conclusion, it marks the emergence of a thrilling new writer.

Spock, Data, Worf, B'Elanna Torres, Seven of Nine, Odo, Michael Burnham, Soji. Many of Star Trek's most beloved characters are children of two worlds, the products of competing biologies, materials, and cultures. Their popularity is unsurprising: authors mine conflicted identities for dramatic effect, and viewers see their own struggles reflected in the challenges of individuals who never seem to quite fit in. This book demonstrates that the tradition is not new. Spock and his fellow hybrids have their roots in anti-slavery literature. Abolitionist authors introduced protagonists who were both Black and White, yet not fully accepted as either. Divided at their core, the attempts of these noble yet tortured individuals to bridge their two races inevitably ended in tragedy. Gene Roddenberry and his successors thrust the character type into the future, using it to explore the evolving racial attitudes of their times. Star Trek's tragic hybrids have asked audiences to see beyond color, to embrace multiculturism, to accept mixed-race identity, and, finally, to acknowledge the consequences of systemic oppression.