Space Invaders

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature A dreamlike evocation of a generation that grew up in the shadow of a dictatorship in 1980s Chile Space Invaders is the story of a group of childhood friends who, in adulthood, are preoccupied by uneasy memories and visions of their classmate Estrella González Jepsen. In their dreams, they catch glimpses of Estrella’s braids, hear echoes of her voice, and read old letters that eventually, mysteriously, stopped arriving. They recall regimented school assemblies, nationalistic class performances, and a trip to the beach. Soon it becomes clear that Estrella’s father was a ranking government officer implicated in the violent crimes of the Pinochet regime, and the question of what became of her after she left school haunts her erstwhile friends. Growing up, these friends—from her pen pal, Maldonado, to her crush, Riquelme—were old enough to sense the danger and tension that surrounded them, but were powerless in the face of it. They could control only the stories they told one another and the “ghostly green bullets” they fired in the video game they played obsessively. One of the leading Latin American writers of her generation, Nona Fernández effortlessly builds a choral and constantly shifting image of young life in the waning years of the dictatorship. In her short but intricately layered novel, she summons the collective memory of a generation, rescuing felt truth from the oblivion of official history.

Increasingly, women and minorities are entering fields where white male power is firmly entrenched. This work interrogates the pernicious, subtle but nonetheless widely held view that certain bodies are naturally entitled to certain spaces, while others are not.

The Rugrats babies become convinced that Earth is about to be invaded by space aliens.

Harrison is a boy who loves life and likes to share with others, but as he grows older the people around him are finding that he stands too close and maybe hugs a little too much--until his father teaches him the Space Saver rhyme, a method for determining just the right amount of space to leave between himself and others.

Space Invaders argues for the importance of a radical geographic perspective in enabling us to make sense of protests and social movements around the world. Under conditions of increasing global economic inequalities, we are witnessing the flourishing of grassroots people's movements fighting for improved rights.Whether it be the alter-globalisation mobilisations of the turn of the century, the flurry of Occupy protests, or the current wave of anti-austerity mobilisations taking place, there is a geographical logic to all forms of protest whether that be through transforming landscapes, occupying enemy territory or developing solidarity and communication networks.Paul Routledge takes a primarily auto-ethnographical perspective, drawing upon his extensive experience over the past thirty years working with various forms of protest in Europe, Asia and Latin America, to provide an account of how a radical geographical imagination can inform our understanding and the prosecution of protest.

Manned space programs attract the most media attention, and it is not hard to understand why: the danger, the heroism, the sheer adventure we as earthbound observers can imagine when humans are involved. But robotic missions deserve a respectful and detailed history and analysis of their own, and this book provides it. Instead of describing one specific spacecraft or mission, Michel van Pelt offers a "behind the scenes" look at the life of a space probe from its first conceptual design to the analysis of the scientific data returned by the spacecraft.

The first in the field to focus on the key aspects of videogames themselves as a distinctive medium, this is a rich and original read for gamers as well as students and researchers of popular culture internationally, which reviews the passionate gamer/game relationship viz all types of games from "Doom" to "EverQuest". Videogames now rival Hollywood cinema in popularity and profits and there are huge followings for titles such as "Tomb Raider" or "The Sims". Exactly what games offer, however, as a distinct form of entertainment, has received scant attention. This book is a valuable contribution to this new field. Its main focus is on key formal aspects of games and the experiences and pleasures offered by the activities they require of the player. A wide range of games are considered, from first-person shooters to third-person action-adventures, strategy, sports-related and role-playing games. Issues examined in detail include the characteristics of gameplay and its relationship with narrative, genre, virtual landscapes, realism, spectacle and sensation. Lively and accessible in style, this book is written for both an academic readership and the wider audience of gamers and those interested in popular culture.