Breakfast Of Champions is vintage Vonnegut. One of his favorite characters, aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. The result is murderously funny satire as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.
In 1776 Thomas Jefferson, a future president, authored the most explosive document in the history of America: The Declaration of Independence, formally severing the link between America and the British state. Michael Hardt, co-author of the groundbreaking Empire and Multitude, examines this and other texts by Jefferson, arguing that his powerful co...more
What you're reading right now is known as the “flap copy.” This is where the 72,444 words of my latest book, Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way, are cooked down to fit in a 3 ½-by-9 ½-inch column. But how does one do that with a fictional story about a B movie actor’s disastrous attempt to finally star in a big-budget Hollywood movie? Do yo...more
THE INSPIRATION FOR BLADERUNNER. . . Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was published in 1968. Grim and foreboding, even today it is a masterpiece ahead of its time. By 2021, the World War had killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remained coveted any living creature, and for people who ...more
Remember that monster on the wing of the airplane? William Shatner saw it on The Twilight Zone, John Lithgow saw it in the movie-even Bart Simpson saw it. "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" is just one of many classic horror stories by Richard Matheson that have insinuated themselves into our collective imagination. Here are more than twenty of Matheson's ...more
Finest heroic poem in Old English celebrates character and exploits of Beowulf, a young nobleman of the Geats, a people of southern Sweden. Narrative combines mythical elements, Christian and pagan sensibilities, actual historical figures and events to create a striking work of great power and beauty. Authoritative translation by R. K. Gordon. Gene...more
Nowadays firemen start fires. Fireman Guy Montag loves to rush to a fire and watch books burn up. Then he met a seventeen-year old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid, and a professor who told him of a future where people could think. And Guy Montag knew what he had to do....