The outcome of the first international conference on David Mitchell's writing, this collection of critical essays, focuses on his first three novels - Ghostwritten (1999), number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas (2004) - to provide a sustained analysis of Mitchell's complex narrative techniques and the literary, political and cultural implications of his early work. The essays cover topics ranging from narrative structure, genre and the Bildungsroman to representations of Japan, postmodernism, the construction of identity, utopia, science fiction and postcolonialism.ContentsForewordDavid Mitchell1. Introducing David Mitchell s Universe: A Twenty-First Century House of FictionSarah Dillon2. The Novels in Nine PartsPeter Childs and James Green3. Or something like that : Coming of Age in number9dreamKathryn Simpson4. Remediations of Japan in number9dreamBaryon Tensor Posadas5. The Stories We Tell: Discursive Identity Through Narrative Form in Cloud AtlasCourtney Hopf6. Cloud Atlas: From Postmodernity to the PosthumanHélène Machinal7. Cloud Atlas and If on a winter s night atraveller: Fragmentation and Integrity in the Postmodern NovelWill McMorran8. Strange Transactions : Utopia, Transmigration and Time in Ghostwritten and Cloud AtlasCaroline Edwards9. Speculative Fiction as Postcolonial: Critique in Ghostwritten and Cloud AtlasNicholas Dunlop10. Moonlight bright as a UFO abduction : Science Fiction, Present-Future Alienation and Cognitive MappingWilliam StephensonNotes on ContributorsIndexAbout the EditorSarah Dillon is Lecturer in Contemporary Fiction in the School of English at the University of St Andrews. She is author of The Palimpsest: Literature, Criticism, Theory (2007) and has published essays on Jacques Derrida, Elizabeth Bowen, H.D., Michel Faber, Maggie Gee and David Mitchell.

David Mitchell: Critical Essays (Contemporary Writers: Critical Essays)

Literature & Fiction

Dillon, Sarah

History & Criticism

Gylphi

What is interactive art? Is this a genre? A medium? An art movement? Must a work be physically active to be classified as such, or do we interact when we sense and make sense? Is a switch-throw or link-click enough - I do this, and that happens - or must subjects and objects be confused over time? Is interaction multiple in its engagements (relational), or a one-to-one reaction (programmed)? Are interactive designs somehow more democratic and individualized than others, or is that merely a commercial strategy to sell products and ideas?
This book argues that interactive art frames moving-thinking-feeling as embodiment; the body is addressed as it is formed, and in relation. Interactive installations amplify how the body's inscriptions, meanings, and matters unfold out, while the world's sensations, concepts, and matters enfold in. Interactive artwork creates situations that enhance, disrupt, and alter experience and action in ways that call attention to our varied relationships with and as both structure and matter. Nathaniel Stern's inspirational book, Interactive Art and Embodiment, outlines how new media has the ability to intervene in, and challenge, not only the construction of bodies and identities, but also the ongoing and emergent processes of embodiment, as they happen. It includes immersive descriptions of a significant number of interactive artworks and over 40 colour images. The theorists, artists, practitioners and curators discussed in this text include Brian Massumi, Christiane Paul, Sarah Cook, Beryl Graham, Kelli Fuery, Theodore Watson, William Kentridge, Char Davies, Stelarc, Janet Cardiff, Carlo Zanni, Tero Saarinen, Karen Barad, Daniel Rozin, Richard Schechner, Nicole Ridgway, Rebecca Schneider, Annie Sprinkle, Karen Finley, VALIE EXPORT, The Guerrilla Girls, Tegan Bristow, Brian Knep, Anna Munster, Zach Lieberman, Golan Levin, Simon Penny, Camille Utterback, Jean-Luc Nancy, The Millefiore Effect, Nick Crossley, Mathieu Briand, Scott Snibbe, David Rokeby, José Gil, Erin Manning, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and Norah Zuniga Shaw Contents Acknowledgments (p. xi) Series Foreword (p. xiii) Introduction: Art Philosophy (p. 1) Chapter 1: Digital is as Digital Does (p. 21) Chapter 2: The Implicit Body as Performance (p. 53) Chapter 3: A Critical Framework for Interactive Art (p. 89) Chapter 4: Body-Language (p. 105) Chapter 5: Social-Anatomies (p. 143) Chapter 6: Flesh-Space (p. 173) Chapter 7: Implicating Art Works (p. 205) In Production: Companion Chapter (Introduction) (p. 253) Bibliography (p. 261) Index (p. 281)

Interactive Art and Embodiment: The Implicit Body as Performance (Arts Future Book)

Arts & Photography

Stern, Nathaniel

J. G. Ballard once declared that the most truly alien planet is Earth and in his science fiction he abandoned the traditional imagery of rocket ships traveling to distant galaxies to address the otherworldliness of this world. The Empires of J. G. Ballard is the first extensive study of Ballard's critical vision of nation and empire, of the political geography of this planet. Paddy examines how Ballard s self-perceived status as an outsider and exile, the Sheppertonian from Shanghai, generated an outlook that celebrated worldliness and condemned parochialism. This book brings to light how Ballard wrestled with notions of national identity and speculated upon the social and psychological implications of the post-war transformation of older models of empire into new imperialisms of consumerism and globalization. Presenting analyses of Ballard s full body of work with its tales of reverse colonization, psychological imperialism, the savagery of civilization, estranged Englishmen abroad and at home, and multinational communities built on crime, The Empires of J. G. Ballard offers a fresh perspective on the fiction of J. G. Ballard.

The Empires of J. G. Ballard: An Imagined Geography (SF Storyworlds: Critical Studies in Science Fiction)

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Paddy, David Ian

Science Fiction

Writers of creative non-fiction are often expected to be able to recreate reality, to deal with, or even access, a singular truth. But the author, like any human, is not an automaton remotely tasked with capturing a life or an event.   Whether we tell stories and understand them as fiction or non-fiction, or whether we draw away from these classifications, writers craft and shape writing all writing. No experience exists on a flat plane, and recounting or interpreting events will always involve some element of artistic manipulation: every instance, exchange, discussion, event is open to multiple interpretations and can be described in many ways, all of which are potentially truthful.   Writing Creative Non-Fiction: Determining the Form contains essays and original writing from novelists, poets, songwriters, musicians and academics. The book covers topics that range from explorations of the role of the author, definitions and representations of the form, self and illness, to the spectral elements of non-fiction and its role in historical narratives. The essays included in this volume address everything from memoir, biography and autobiography to a discussion of musical approaches to criticism and a non/fiction interview.   The book identifies key writers including Christopher Isherwood, David Shields, James Frey, Åsne Seierstad, John D'Agata, W. G. Sebald, Jonathan Coe, Hilary Mantel, James Kelman, Liz Lochhead and Arthur Frank and is essential reading for students, researchers and writers of creative non-fiction.   Contents   Notes on Contributors   Pathways to Determining Form Laura Tansley and Micaela Maftei   A Bulgarian Journey Kapka Kassabova   At the Will of Our Stories John I MacArtney   She and I: Composite Characters in Creative Non-Fiction Katie Karnehm   More Lies Please: Biography and the Duty to Abandon Truth Rodge Glass   Ghosts of the Real: The Spectral Memoir Helen Pleasance   One doesn t have much but oneself : Christopher Isherwood s Investigation into Identity and the Manipulation of Form in The Memorial Rebecca Gordon Stewart   Menna, Martha and Me: The Possibilities of Epistolary Criticism Rhiannon Marks   An Introduction to Schizoanalysis : The Development of a Musical Approach to Criticism Jo Collinson Scott   Eyes! Birds! Walnuts! Pennies! Erin Soros   Just Words Erin Soros   It is in their Nature to Change: On Mis-leading Elizabeth Reeder   Index

Writing Creative Non-Fiction: Determining the Form (Fiction and Writing)

Reference

Tansley, Laura

Maftei, Micaela

Writing, Research & Publishing Guides

Since the appearance of Remainder in 2005, Tom McCarthy has emerged as one of the most significant British novelists of the twenty-first century, with two of his first four novels appearing on the Man Booker shortlist. This collection, the first devoted to McCarthy, offers a breadth of angles on the novels Remainder (2005), Men in Space (2007), C (2010), and Satin Island (2015), placing them in their literary and philosophical contexts, from the avant-gardes of the early twentieth century to the speculative realists of the early twenty-first. The essays cover topics ranging from the roles that geometry, architecture, memory, materiality, and posthumanism play in McCarthy's writing; they consider his relation to modernism and to postmodernism; and they examine his artistic output under the guise of the International Necronautical Society.

Tom McCarthy: Critical Essays (Contemporary Writers: Critical Essays)

Duncan, Dennis

Essays & Correspondence

Aliens? Absolutely. Robots? Of course. But why are there so many priests in space? For over a century, Science Fiction has had an obsession with Roman Catholicism. The religion is both SF's dark twin and its dirty secret. In this first ever study of the relationship between Catholicism and SF, Jim Clarke explores the genre's co-dependence and antagonism with the largest sect of Christianity. Tracking its origins all the way back to the pamphlet wars of the Enlightenment and SF's Gothic origins, Clarke unveils a story of robot Popes, Jesuit missions to the stars, first contact between aliens and the Inquisition, and rewritings of the Reformation. Featuring close readings of over fifty SF texts, Clarke examines how the genre s greatest invention might just be the imaginary Catholicism it repeatedly and obsessively depicts, a faux Catholicism at odds with the religion's own intriguing interest in both science and the possibility of alien life.

Science Fiction and Catholicism: The Rise and Fall of the Robot Papacy (SF Storyworlds: Critical Studies in Science Fiction)

Clarke, Jim

Art and Idea in the Novels of China Miéville (SF Storyworlds: Critical Studies in Science Fiction)

Freedman, Carl

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Gylphi publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Gylphi