Shape Of Things To Come

First published in 1933, "The Shape of Things to Come" is science fiction novel written by H. G. Wells. Within it, world events between 1933 and 2106 are speculated with a single superstate representing the solution to all humanity's problems. A classic example of Wellsian prophesy, this volume is highly recommended for fans of his work and of the science fiction genre. Herbert George Wells (1866 - 1946) was a prolific English writer who wrote in a variety of genres, including the novel, politics, history, and social commentary. Today, he is perhaps best remembered for his contributions to the science fiction genre thanks to such novels as "The Time Machine" (1895), "The Invisible Man" (1897), and "The War of the Worlds" (1898). Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this book now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.

Published in conjunction with the opening of the new Saatchi Gallery in London, one of today’s most important institutions collecting and exhibiting contemporary art, this mammoth book is the most comprehensive volume on contemporary sculpture. The title itself refers to H. G. Wells’s eponymous novel which envisioned the future and was a surprisingly accurate prophecy reflecting the author’s own time. That book inspired Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which a great monolith is an iconic but enigmatic sculptural presence. This new book opens with an enormous, standing monolithic Styrofoam sculpture of a videocassette of 2001 and, like the Wells book, seeks to explore how sculpture will evolve in the coming decades.

From the author of Mystery Train and Lipstick Traces, an exhilarating and provocative investigation of the tangle of American identity "America is a place and a story, made up of exuberance and suspicion, crime and liberation, lynch mobs and escapes; its greatest testaments are made of portents and warnings, biblical allusions that lose all certainty in the American air." It is this story of self-invention and nationhood that Greil Marcus rediscovers, beginning with John Winthrop's invocation of America as a "city on the hill," Lincoln's second inaugural address, and Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech about his American dream. Listening to these prophetic founding statements, Marcus explores America's promise as a New Jerusalem and the nature of its covenant: first with God, and then with its own citizens. In the nineteenth century, this vision of the nation's story was told in public as part of common discourse, to be fought over in plain speech and flights of gorgeous rhetoric. Since then, Marcus argues, it has become cryptic, a story told more in art than in politics. He traces it across the continent and through time, hearing the tale in the disparate voices of writers, filmmakers, performers, and actors: Philip Roth, David Lynch, David Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, Sheryl Lee, and Bill Pullman. In The Shape of Things to Come, the future and the past merge in extraordinary and uncanny ways, and Marcus proves once again that he is our most imaginative and original cultural critic.

Isabelle, a woman in her thirties without any of the trappings of a grown-up life, has just been fired from her job at a San Francisco phone company. Returning to the midwestern suburb of her childhood, Standardsville, Illinois, she contends with her dating single mother, a neighbor who once appeared on The Honeymooners, and an ex-boyfriend. She also becomes a mystery shopper for a temp agency, posing as a variety of potential tenants for newly built suburban communities to access their exclusive services. Enchanted by the possiblities of disguise, Isabelle spins a web of lies that keeps the world at a distance until she unearths long-kept secrets that force her to rethink everything she thought she knew.

The Book of Revelation's legacy of visual imagery is evaluated here, from the 11th century to the end of World War 2 illuminated manuscripts, books, prints and drawings of apocalyptic phases are examined.

“A joyful, wildly imaginative book” —The New York Times It’s Rashin’s first day of school in America! Everything is a different shape than what she’s used to: from the foods on her breakfast plate to the letters in the books! And the kids' families are from all over! The new teacher asks each child to imagine the shape of home on a map. Rashin knows right away what she’ll say: Iran looks like a cat! What will the other kids say? What about the country YOUR family is originally from? Is it shaped like an apple? A boot? A torch? Open this book to join Rashin in discovering the true things that shape a place called home. P R A I S E ★ “A creative, child-centered picture book about finding a new home after immigration. Ebulliently illustrated.” —Kirkus (starred) ★ “It’s hard to find a more joyful take on the first day of school in a new country than that found in Kheiriyeh’s new work.” —School Library Journal (starred) ★ “Exuberant...A warm and welcoming story about a group of children who may have come from other places but have found a classroom that is ‘shaped like a home.’” —Booklist (starred)

Beware - this book will blow your mind! Do you believe we can predict the future - through dreams, visions, synchronicity? I didn't ... until I read the mind-altering The Shape of Things to Come. 'Everything we need to know is right in front of us if we take the time to look. We can sit back and accept the future before us, or we can turn the tide and change the odds. The choice is up to us. Until now, we have not known how to make that choice.' Jane Anderson This is the extraordinary story of a scientist's quest to understand her ability to see future events in her dreams. Drawing on current breakthroughs in quantum physics, this exploration of precognition is guaranteed to change your perceptions of reality and persuade you most convincingly that not only is it possible to predict the future, but it's possible to change it too. Jane Anderson's research is based on finding a scientific explanation for precognition - the knowledge of future events. To do this she takes the reader on a truly magical mystery tour through telepathy, clairvoyancy, hypnosis (in which she is hypnotised to progress rather than regress; that is, to predict a future event - which, believe it or not, she does extremely accurately), synchronicity and, though it may seem a strange bedfellow, quantum physics. Jane Anderson has been researching dreams for several years so she's no stranger to dreams that accurately predict the future - and there are many staggering examples in the book. You will meet some of the fifty precognitive dreamers and visionaries she interviewed along the way. Four esteemed professional clairvoyants tell of their own experiences, hopes, fears and philosophies while Jane acts the detective and weighs up the body of evidence. On the journey all sorts of big questions are asked about predetermination, free will, the nature of god ... so be prepared to stretch your mind. Emerging with a new understanding of precognition, the only question remaining is whether our ability to experience the future and then live through it again is merely a fantastic mechanism explicable by science and theory, or whether there is a deeper spiritual meaning behind it all. Jane's quest travels the realms of spiritual meanings and purpose while also presenting you with down to earth practical steps and scientific models, based on her own research, to help you gain insight into the shape of things to come in your own life. An example of precognition from The Shape of Things to Come Anna's second marriage had broken up and she had returned home to her mother's house. Her husband would not move out of their home and she couldn't get access to collect sentimental gifts or retrieve their orange Siamese cat wich had been a present from her first husband. Her dream therefore occurred at a time of great stress. 'I dreamed I was walking around the house, which had been stripped bare of all its furniture. My husband had left, taking everything but my orange cat which I found in the wardrobe with its head off. As I walked around the house I heard a voice say "It's okay, you can come back now." ' The next day she returned to her house and it was indeed empty. She found the decapitated cat in the wardrobe.

He was the consummate designer of film architecture on a grand scale. He was known for his visual flair and timeless innovation, a man who meticulously preplanned the color and design of each film through a series of continuity sketches that made clear camera angles, lighting, and the actors' positions for each scene, translating dramatic conventions of the stage to the new capabilities of film. Here is the long-awaited book on William Cameron Menzies, Hollywood's first and greatest production designer, a job title David O. Selznick invented for Menzies' extraordinary, all-encompassing, Academy Award-winning work on Gone With the Wind (which he effectively co-directed). It was Menzies--winner of the first-ever Academy Award for Art Direction, and who was as well a director (fourteen pictures) and a producer (twelve pictures)--who changed the way movies were (and still are) made, in a career that spanned four decades, from the 1920s through the 1950s. Now, James Curtis, acclaimed film historian and biographer, writes of Menzies' life and work as the most influential designer in the history of film. Interviewing colleagues, actors, directors, friends, and family, and with full access to the Menzies family collection of artwork and unpublished writing, Curtis gives us the path-finding work of the movies' most daring and dynamic production designer: his evolution as artist, art director, production designer, and director. Here is a portrait of a man in his time that makes clear how the movies were forever transformed by his startling, visionary work.--Adapted from book jacket.