Before he became the revered master of science fiction, Rod Serling was a just a writer who had to fight to make his voice heard. He vehemently challenged the networks and viewership alike to expand their minds and standards―rejecting notions of censorship, racism and war. But it wasn’t until he began to write about real world enemies in the guise of aliens and monsters that people lent their ears. In doing so, he pushed the television industry to the edge of glory, and himself to the edge of sanity. Rod operated in a dimension beyond that of contemporary society, making him both a revolutionary and an outsider.

    Wiley and Mr. Bona have found just the right tone for writing about this most particular of American phenomena.

    With intriguing insights from film critics and a wealth of factual details from historians and academics, general editor Stephen Jay Schneider has brought together the data, the drama, and the passions that have inspired movies about time travel, close encounters, distant planets, extraterrestrial monsters, alien invasions, and the many other story ingredients that enliven science fiction films. Plot summaries, cast and credit listings, and 200 dramatic illustrations recapture unforgettable moments from sci-fi hits that include " Alien, The Andromeda Strain, The Empire Strikes Back, The Fly, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Planet of the Apes, Silent Running, The Thing, " and many, many others. Illustrations include dramatic still shots from the films and memorable movie posters. Here is a reference volume that belongs on the bookshelf of every film buff and science fiction fan.

    This second edition is hugely revised and expanded to cover the sixth and seventh seasons of Buffy and the third and fourth seasons of Angel. It contains chapters on the relationship between Buffy and the lovelorn vampire Spike and on the thematic structure of Angel, as well as interviews on the writing of Buffy with scriptwriters Jane Espenson and Steven DeKnight. Individual chapters have been updated and the useful episode guide is expanded to cover all seven seasons of Buffy and the four seasons of Angel, as is Roz Kaveney's general introduction to the scenes and structures of each season.

    Discover the secrets, never before seen on television, of Twin Peaks' most-wanted man, who scored a perfect 100 on his marksmanship test and once let a gentle, beautiful woman lead him astray. He's Dale Cooper - the man who seems too good to be true - and this is his story.

    In the vein of A.J. Jacobs’s New York Times bestselling book The Know-It-All, and with the snarky sarcasm of television’s Mystery Science Theater 3000 and The Soup, Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies leaves no stone unturned. With a foreword by cult director George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead).

    Writing for the “boob tube” didn’t even cross his mind. But he ended up in L.A. in the late 80’s, when television writers were experiencing their equivalent of a gold rush. After the billion- dollar syndication of Seinfeld, when studios were paying astronomical amounts of money to writers to create the next Friends or ER, the sudden mania for scripted entertainment made the TV writer a hot commodity. He found himself meeting with big agents, inside primetime story rooms, pitch meetings, and on the set of some of TVs most popular shows, and making more money than he'’d ever thought possible. Weaving his personal story with television’s, Stepakoff takes us behind the scenes to show what it’s like to have a story idea one week and see it come to life and be seen by millions of people just a week later. Stepakoff also takes us inside the industry to explain what we’re watching and why by exploring the growing problems of media consolidation, the effects of interference from executives, the lack of diversity, and what reality television is doing to quality scripted television. When the market crashed and the dust settled, TV executives and the media conglomerates they worked for were sitting on a broken business model. Slowly, a new programming idea began to take hold—what if the writer and their salaries were removed from the equation? Reality TV was born and the TV writer suddenly became obsolete— at least temporarily.

    The Brat Pack and their contemporaries have grown up, but celluloid has them flickering forever, angst-ridden, haunted, guileless, cocky, stripped to their briefs, and all dressed up pretty in pink. 25 photos, 8-page color insert.

    Clearly, geeks know something about life in the 21st century that other folks don’t—something we all can learn from. Geek Wisdom takes as gospel some 200 of the most powerful and oft-cited quotes from movies (“Where we’re going, we don’t need roads”), television (“Now we know—and knowing is half the battle”), literature (“All that is gold does not glitter”), games, science, the Internet, and more. Now these beloved pearls of modern-day culture have been painstakingly interpreted by a diverse team of hardcore nerds with their imaginations turned up to 11. Yes, this collection of mini-essays is by, for, and about geeks—but it’s just so surprisingly profound, the rest of us would have to be dorks not to read it. So say we all.

    But despite many books about their films and individual lives, there has never been a fully researched, definitive narrative biography of the duo, from birth to death.Louvish traces the early lives of Stanley Jefferson and Norvell Hardy and the surrounding minstrel and variety theatre, which influenced all of their later work. Louvish examines the rarely seen solo films of both our heroes, prior to their serendipitous pairing in 1927, in the long-lost short "Duck Soup." The inspired casting teamed them until their last days. Both often married, they found balancing their personal and professional lives a nearly impossible feat.Between 1927 and 1938, they were able to successfully bridge the gap between silent and sound films, which tripped up most of their prominent colleagues. Their Hal Roach and MGM films were brilliant, but their move in 1941, to Twentieth Century Fox proved disastrous, with the nine films made there ranking as some of the most embarrassing moments of cinematic history.In spite of this, Laurel and Hardy survived as exemplars of lasting genius, and their influence is seen to this day. The clowns were elusive behind their masks, but now Simon Louvish can finally reveal their full and complex humanity, and their passionate devotion to their art. In Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy: The Double Life of Laurel and Hardy, Louvish has seamlessly woven tireless and thorough research into an authoritative biography of these two important and influential Hollywood pioneers.

    In Running Through Corridors, two Doctor Who lovers of old - Robert Shearman and Toby Hadoke - embark on an epic quest of friendship: spend the gap year of 2009 (when Doctor Who consisted of a handful of specials rather than a full season) re-watching the whole of Who two episodes a day, every day, from the show's start in 1963 and ending with David Tennant's swan song on New Year's, 2010.This three-volume series contains Shearman and Hadoke's diary of that experience - a grand opus of their wry observations about the show, their desire to see the good in every story, and their chronicle of the real-life changes to Who in that year.With this book, Who fans will feel that they're watching along with Shearman (World Fantasy Award winner, Hugo Award nominee and writer on the new Doctor Who) and Hadoke (renowned stage performer for his one-man comedy show, Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf) as they make their grand journey through the world's most wonderful and longest-running drama series.

    But of all the hundreds of televised stories, which are the ones you must watch? Featuring 50 stories from all eleven Doctors, Who’s 50 is full of behind-the-scenes details, exhilarating moments, connections to Who lore, goofs, interesting trivia and much, much more. Who’s 50 tells the story of this global sensation: its successes, its tribulations and its triumphant return.

    Since 2008 the fiendishly difficult quiz show has been challenging contestants to find connections between apparently unrelated clues.The Only Connect Quiz Book collects over 200 of the most entertaining and perplexing challenges from the team behind the BBC’s hugely popular quiz show - including many new (never broadcast) questions. Covering each of the show’s four rounds – Connections, Sequences, the Connecting Wall and Missing Vowels – and with introductions from presenter Victoria Coren Mitchell, here is your chance to put your own sleuthing and quizzical knowledge to the Only Connect test.

    Illustrated throughout with behind-the-scenes photos.

    But final editorial control has always belonged to the winners. And nobody likes winners... This will be the very first in-depth examination of the creation of a British institution like no other, arguably the greatest sitcom of all time. With the participation -- so far -- of Tony Robinson, Stephen Fry and producer John Lloyd, this will be the definitive history of the programme. The author will use all existing archive footage and rare literature, plus new revelations from personal interviews with the makers themselves, to finally reflect the full scope of the tale of how the 70s alumni of three great universities -- Oxford, Cambridge and not Hull, but Manchester -- discovered a unique chemistry that would see them build a timeless comic masterpiece.