Strange Future

Sometime near the start of the 1990s, the future became a place of national decline. The United States had entered a period of great anxiety fueled by the shrinking of the white middle class, the increasingly visible misery of poor urban blacks, and the mass immigration of nonwhites. Perhaps more than any other event marking the passage through these dark years, the 1992 Los Angeles riots have sparked imaginative and critical works reacting to this profound pessimism. Focusing on a wide range of these creative works, Min Hyoung Song shows how the L.A. riots have become a cultural-literary event—an important reference and resource for imagining the social problems plaguing the United States and its possible futures. Song considers works that address the riots and often the traumatic place of the Korean American community within them: the independent documentary Sa-I-Gu (Korean for April 29, the date the riots began), Chang-rae Lee’s novel Native Speaker, the commercial film Strange Days, and the experimental drama of Anna Deavere Smith, among many others. He describes how cultural producers have used the riots to examine the narrative of national decline, manipulating language and visual elements, borrowing and refashioning familiar tropes, and, perhaps most significantly, repeatedly turning to metaphors of bodily suffering to convey a sense of an unraveling social fabric. Song argues that these aesthetic experiments offer ways of revisiting the traumas of the past in order to imagine more survivable futures.

This edited volume addresses the 2007/2009 financial crisis as the occasion to engage critically with the corpus of Susan Strange's work, in order to consider what changes (if any) this crisis portends for the structural organization of the global political economy. The contributors use Strange's rich conceptual framework to explore the financial crisis and its aftermath, and reflect critically on the broader contributions which her work has made to the discipline of IPE. The volume makes three valuable contributions for scholars and students. First, it raises the profile of Susan Strange, a unique and powerful contributor to the field of IPE whose ideas matter to our current circumstance and can provide deep and enduring insights into important questions and issues. Secondly, each contributor to this volume combines her work and ideas with that of other traditions or individual theorists in ways that extend and/or deepen Strange's own efforts. Finally, this volume leaves us with a judicious optimism about the future of both IPE and the world as it actually is, on the ground. This book will be of interest to scholars and students who are interested in the dynamics shaping contemporary and future developments in the global political economy, as well as those who are interested in the theoretical debates about how to study IPE.

Explore the mind and world of the brilliant neurosurgeon-turned-Sorcerer Supreme Doctor Stephen Strange Marvel Comics legends Stan Lee and Steve Ditko first introduced Doctor Stephen Strange to the world in 1963—and his spellbinding adventures have wowed comic book fans ever since. Over fifty years later, the brilliant neurosurgeon-turned-Sorcerer Supreme has finally travelled from the pages of comics to the big screen, introducing a new generation of fans to his mind-bending mysticism and self-sacrificing heroics. In Doctor Strange and Philosophy, Mark D. White takes readers on a tour through some of the most interesting and unusual philosophical questions which surround Stephen Strange and his place in the Marvel Universe. Essays from two-dozen Philosophers Supreme illuminate how essential philosophical concepts, including existentialism, epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics, relate to the world of Doctor Strange. Fans will find answers to all their Strange questions: How does Doctor Strange reconcile his beliefs in science and magic? What does his astral self say about the relationship between mind and body? Why is he always so alone? And what does he mean when he says we’re just “tiny momentary specks within an indifferent universe”—and why was he wrong? You won’t need the Eye of Agamotto to comprehend all that is wise within. Doctor Strange and Philosophy offers comic book fans and philosophers alike the chance to dive deeper into the world of one of Marvel’s most mystical superheroes.

Collects Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #34-47 and Annual #2, Silver Surfer (1987) #67 and Spider-Man/Dr. Strange: The Way to Dusty Death. From here to Infinity! As Earth's heroes reckon with Thanos and his universe-altering Infinity Gauntlet, Doctor Strange takes on vital mystical missions to bolster their forces - but will his greatest threat be Doctor Doom or the inscrutable Adam Warlock? Stephen is attacked by his old friend the Silver Surfer and his old foe Nightmare - before the full horror of the gathered Lords of Fear is unleashed! Then, the Doctor enlists in the Infinity War - and crosses paths with Galactus! An urgent quest leads Strange and his allies into encounters with the godlike entities Agamotto and Cyttorak - and don't forget Cyttorak's champion, the unstoppable Juggernaut! Plus: Wolverine, Spider-Man, the Scarlet Witch, a reunion of the dynamic Defenders and more!

The biggest collection of supernatural, macabre, eerie, and gothic tales is here! Grab your copy and get ready for the chills down your spine: Edgar Allan Poe: The Tell-Tale Heart The Cask of Amontillado The Black Cat... Henry James: The Turn of the Screw The Ghostly Rental... H. P. Lovecraft: The Dunwich Horror The Shunned House... Mary Shelley: Frankenstein The Mortal Immortal The Evil Eye... John William Polidori: The Vampyre Bram Stoker: Dracula The Jewel of Seven Stars The Lair of the White Worm... Algernon Blackwood: The Willows A Haunted Island A Case of Eavesdropping Ancient Sorceries... Gaston Leroux: The Phantom of the Opera Marjorie Bowen: Black Magic Charles Dickens: The Mystery of Edwin Drood Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray Washington Irving: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Théophile Gautier: Clarimonde The Mummy's Foot Richard Marsh: The Beetle Arthur Conan Doyle: The Hound of the Baskervilles The Silver Hatchet... Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Carmilla Uncle Silas... M. R. James: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary A Thin Ghost and Others Wilkie Collins: The Woman in White The Haunted Hotel The Devil's Spectacles E. F. Benson: The Room in the Tower The Terror by Night... Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Birth Mark The House of the Seven Gables... Ambrose Bierce: Can Such Things Be? Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories Arthur Machen: The Great God Pan The Terror... William Hope Hodgson: The House on the Borderland The Night Land M. P. Shiel: Shapes in the Fire Ralph Adams Cram: Black Spirits and White Grant Allen: The Reverend John Creedy Dr. Greatrex's Engagement... Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto William Thomas Beckford: Vathek Matthew Gregory Lewis: The Monk Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights Rudyard Kipling: The Phantom Rickshaw Guy de Maupassant: The Horla Jerome K. Jerome: Told After Supper...

Thomas Gordon's life in the city was going just fine. He had a decent job, a nice condo, and was generally content with life. One day, however, his boss was in a particularly foul mood, and a chain of inexplicable mishaps resulted in Thomas getting fired. Fed up with the world, he begins to search for an escape to a better life. While sitting at the Realtor's office, he stumbles upon a flyer on a bulletin board that asks a simple question: "Fed Up?" After calling the number on the pull tab, he meets a group of scientists with an interesting proposition: human cryogenic preservation... Thomas and his companions Vera and Doug emerge into the strange future of the twenty-third century: a world full of amazing technological advances and equally amazing people. Upon digging a little further below the surface, though, they quickly discover that this future isn't exactly the "better world" that everyone thought it would be...

In this collection of urban fantasy stories, editors George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois explore the places where mystery waits at the end of every alley and where the things that go bump in the night have something to fear... In “Death by Dahlia,” #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris takes vampire Dahlia Lynley-Chivers to a lavish party that turns deadly. And with so many creatures of the night in attendance, Dahlia will have a hard time identifying the most likely suspect! #1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Briggs thrills in “In Red, with Pearls,” as a werewolf PI races to crack a case involving zombies, witches, and the most horrifying creatures of them all—lawyers. In “Lord John and the Plague of Zombies,” New York Times bestselling author Diana Gabaldon follows Lord John as he journeys to the beautiful but faintly sinister island paradise of Jamaica, where he’s soon investigating a mystery with no shortage of spiders, snakes, revolutionaries, and, of course, zombies. With these and thirteen more original tales, Down These Strange Streets takes you to the cities where fantasy and mystery collide and where private eyes who have seen it all find something lurking that is stranger still...

In the tradition of Cod and Olives: a fascinating journey into the hidden history, culture, and commerce of caviar. Once merely a substitute for meat during religious fasts, today caviar is an icon of luxury and wealth. In Caviar, Inga Saffron tells, for the first time, the story of how the virgin eggs of the prehistoric-looking, bottom-feeding sturgeon were transformed from a humble peasant food into a czar’s delicacy–and ultimately a coveted status symbol for a rising middle class. She explores how the glistening black eggs became the epitome of culinary extravagance, while taking us on a revealing excursion into the murky world of caviar on the banks of the Volga River and Caspian Sea in Russia, the Elbe in Europe, and the Hudson and Delaware Rivers in the United States. At the same time, Saffron describes the complex industry caviar has spawned, illustrating the unfortunate consequences of mass marketing such a rare commodity. The story of caviar has long been one of conflict, crisis, extravagant claims, and colorful characters, such as the Greek sea captain who first discovered the secret method of transporting the perishable delicacy to Europe, the canny German businessmen who encountered a wealth of untapped sturgeon in American waters, the Russian Communists who created a sophisticated cartel to market caviar to an affluent Western clientele, the dirt-poor poachers who eked out a living from sturgeon in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse and the “caviar Mafia” that has risen in their wake, and the committed scientists who sacrificed their careers to keep caviar on our tables. Filled with lore and intrigue, Caviar is a captivating work of culinary, natural, and cultural history.