We begin with a look at the programming of the day and the original pitch documents for this family show before delving into the Daleks, which almost didn't make the cut. After three years, 1st Doctor William Hartnell left, prompting the BBC to recast their hit rather than ending it, giving us the first "regeneration" and making television history. We follow the succession of doctors—including 3rd Doctor Jon Pertwee, exiled to Earth with his Moriarty in The Master—and see how the program reflected the feminism of the 1970s while gaining mainstream popularity with 4th Doctor Tom Baker ... until declining support from the BBC led to cancelation. Yet millions worldwide continued to enjoy the Whoniverse in syndication, novels, audio dramas, comics and Doctor Who Magazine. A new age dawned in 2005 with 9th Doctor Christopher Eccleston and a serious special effects budget. 10th Doctor David Tennant helped rocket the series back to international popularity and a new era of spinoffs. With Matt Smith as 11th doctor, the show has become a success here in America, where it was long considered just a cult classic. Featuring discussions of the show's concepts and characters and interviews and insights from producers, writers, and actors from across the years; current and former editors and writers of Doctor Who Magazine; and the titular heroes themselves, here is a rich, behind-the-camera investigation into the dazzling multiverse of Doctor Who.

    Set 500 years in the future, Firefly centres around Mal Reynolds, captain of the ship-for-hire Serenity and its eclectic crew of galactic misfits. When he takes on two passengers, a young doctor and his mysterious, telepathic sister, he gets much more than he bargained for. This official companion is just what the show¹s fervent fans, the 'Browncoats', have been waiting for, with unseen photos, scripts, behind the scenes secrets, and exclusive input from the cast and crew, including of course creator Joss Whedon.

    This is an exploration of her relationship with the literary form we have come to know as "science fiction,” a relationship that has been lifelong, stretching from her days as a child reader in the 1940s, through her time as a graduate student at Harvard, where she worked on the Victorian ancestor of the form, and continuing as a writer and reviewer.  This book brings together her three heretofore unpublished Ellmann Lectures from 2010: "Flying Rabbits," which begins with Atwood's early  rabbit superhero creations, and goes on to speculate about masks, capes, weakling alter egos, and Things with Wings; "Burning Bushes," which follows her into Victorian otherlands and beyond; and "Dire Cartographies," which investigates Utopias and Dystopias.  In Other Worlds also includes some of Atwood's key reviews and thoughts about the form. Among those writers discussed are Marge Piercy, Rider Haggard, Ursula Le Guin, Ishiguro, Bryher, Huxley, and Jonathan Swift. She elucidates the differences (as she sees them) between "science fiction" proper, and "speculative fiction," as well as between "sword and sorcery/fantasy" and "slipstream fiction." For all readers who have loved The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake, and The Year of the Flood, In Other Worlds is a must.  From the Hardcover edition.

    But when she discovers a mysterious painting entitled 'The Lord of Winter' in a charity shop, it leads her on an adventure she never could have planned. The painting is a puzzle - and with the help of some bizarre new acquaintances, she plans on solving it. The Angel's Kiss by Melody Malone Detective Melody Malone has an unexpected caller: movie star Rock Railton thinks someone is out to kill him - and when he mentions the 'kiss of the Angel', she takes the case. At the press party for Railton's latest movie, studio owner Max Kliener invites Melody to become their next star. But the cost of fame, she'll soon discover, is greater than anyone could possibly imagine. Devil in the Smoke, as recounted by Mr Justin Richards On a cold day in December, two young boys, tired of sweeping snow from the workhouse yard, decide to build a snowman - and are confronted with a strange and grisly mystery. In horrified fascination, they watch as their snowman begins to bleed... The search for answers to this impossible event will plunge Harry into the most hazardous - and exhilarating - adventure of his life.

    It is a familiar and much-loved British institution that after more than twenty years continues to enjoy enormous success both at home and abroad.The Key to Time marks the programme's coming of age — twenty-one years old on 23 November 1984. Peter Haining has adopted the novel technique of exploring the history of the series through key dates in its many life-cycles. He demonstrates — with extensive reference to files kept in the Doctor Who Production Office — how much a part of British life the programme has become, and how the impact of this extraordinary phenomenon has travelled further afield. He traces the many changes the series has undergone since the first episode was broadcast in November 1963 — not only in terms of regenerated Doctors but also new methods of programme-making. The beginning of the Jon Pertwee era coincided with the switchover from black-and-white to colour, but Peter Haining also gives details of how many of the special effects were achieved, and how this initially modest television series pioneered techniques used in the multi-million-dollar Star Wars.The enthusiastic support of viewers all over the world has contributed to Doctor Who's long and happy life, and The Key to Time includes tributes from fans in Britain, Australia, Canada and the United States, in the form of drawings and sketches inspired by the series.This extensively illustrated special publication, with twenty-four pages of colour photographs, is a superb follow-up to the runaway success of W.H. Allen's Doctor Who: A Celebration.

    Now Lawrence M. Krauss, an internationally known theoretical physicist and educator, has written the quintessential physics book for Trekkers and non-Trekkers alike.Anyone who has ever wondered, "Could this really happen?" will gain useful insights into the "Star Trek" universe (and, incidentally, the real universe) in this charming and accessible volume. Krauss boldly goes where "Star Trek" has gone -- and beyond. He uses the "Star Trek" future as a launching pad to discuss the forefront of modern physics. From Newton to Hawking, from Einstein to Feynman, from Kirk to Janeway, Krauss leads the reader on a voyage to the world of physics as we now know it and as it might one day be.Featuring the Top 10 biggest physics bloopers in "Star Trek," as selected by Nobel Prize-winning physicists and other dedicated Trekkers!"This book is fun, and Mr. Krauss has a nice touch with a tough subject...Readers drawn by frivolity will be treated to substance." "--New York Times Book Review""Today's science fiction is often tomorrow's science fact. The physics that underlies "Star Trek" is surely worth investigating. To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit."--Stephen Hawking (in the foreword)A

    Simultaneously channeling the gonzo energy of Hunter S. Thompson and the wit and insight of Joan Didion, Sullivan shows us—with a laidback, erudite Southern charm that’s all his own—how we really (no, really) live now. In his native Kentucky, Sullivan introduces us to Constantine Rafinesque, a nineteenth-century polymath genius who concocted a dense, fantastical prehistory of the New World. Back in modern times, Sullivan takes us to the Ozarks for a Christian rock festival; to Florida to meet the alumni and straggling refugees of MTV’s Real World, who’ve generated their own self-perpetuating economy of minor celebrity; and all across the South on the trail of the blues. He takes us to Indiana to investigate the formative years of Michael Jackson and Axl Rose and then to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Katrina—and back again as its residents confront the BP oil spill. Gradually, a unifying narrative emerges, a story about this country that we’ve never heard told this way. It’s like a fun-house hall-of-mirrors tour: Sullivan shows us who we are in ways we’ve never imagined to be true. Of course we don’t know whether to laugh or cry when faced with this reflection—it’s our inevitable sob-guffaws that attest to the power of Sullivan’s work.

    From Gothic ghost stories to psychological horror to science fiction, women have been primary architects of speculative literature of all sorts. And their own life stories are as intriguing as their fiction. Everyone knows about Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein, who was rumored to keep her late husband’s heart in her desk drawer. But have you heard of Margaret “Mad Madge” Cavendish, who wrote a science-fiction epic 150 years earlier (and liked to wear topless gowns to the theater)? If you know the astounding work of Shirley Jackson, whose novel The Haunting of Hill House was reinvented as a Netflix series, then try the psychological hauntings of Violet Paget, who was openly involved in long-term romantic relationships with women in the Victorian era. You’ll meet celebrated icons (Ann Radcliffe, V. C. Andrews), forgotten wordsmiths (Eli Colter, Ruby Jean Jensen), and today’s vanguard (Helen Oyeyemi). Curated reading lists point you to their most spine-chilling tales.Part biography, part reader’s guide, the engaging write-ups and detailed reading lists will introduce you to more than a hundred authors and over two hundred of their mysterious and spooky novels, novellas, and stories.

    but quickly moving on to Zoe and Jamie, and more. This all-new series written by Tony Lee (Starship Troopers) features artist Pia Guerra in her first monthly comic since Y The Last Man.

    From the sci-fi literature of Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, and N. K. Jemisin to the musical cosmos of Sun Ra, George Clinton, and the Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am, to the visual and multimedia artists inspired by African Dogon myths and Egyptian deities, the book’s topics range from the “alien” experience of blacks in America to the “wake up” cry that peppers sci-fi literature, sermons, and activism. With a twofold aim to entertain and enlighten, Afrofuturists strive to break down racial, ethnic, and social limitations to empower and free individuals to be themselves.

    With no help from other worlds, they subsist on the food they can grow and that's little enough. But their purpose, their whole life is to maintain the machines that will one day make their world as habitable as old Earth. Life used to be hard. Now as their crops fail, livestock sickens, and the temperature drops, it's becoming impossible. This year's Winter Season Feast won't be the usual celebration. It's not a time for optimism or hope - and it's not a time to welcome unexpected guests. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory find a society breaking apart under the strain. Tensions are mounting, old rivalries are coming to the fore, people are dying...and then the Doctor's old enemies, the Ice Warriors, make their move. With the cold-hearted threat of invasion, the real battle for survival begins. Or does it? The Doctor begins to suspect that behind everything lies a deadlier, and even more chilling danger...

    I wonder if she knows that at least one of her books made a grown woman finally feel like she'd been a normal girl all along. . . ."" -- FROM Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned fromJudy BlumeWhether laughing to tears reading "Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great" or clamoring for more unmistakable "me too!" moments in "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret," girls all over the world have been touched by Judy Blume's poignant coming-of-age stories. Now, in this anthology of essays, twenty-four notable female authors write straight from the heart about the unforgettable novels that left an indelible mark on their childhoods and still influence them today. After growing up from "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing" into "Smart Women," these writers pay tribute, through their reflections and most cherished memories, to one of the most beloved authors of all time.

    From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill, Lindy West, turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You’ve got one.In a laugh-out-loud, incisive cultural critique, West extolls the world-changing magic of truth, urging readers to reckon with dark lies in the heart of the American mythos, and unpacking the complicated, and sometimes tragic, politics of not being a white man in the twenty-first century. She tracks the misogyny and propaganda hidden (or not so hidden) in the media she and her peers devoured growing up, a buffet of distortions, delusions, prejudice, and outright bullsh*t that has allowed white male mediocrity to maintain a death grip on American culture and politics-and that delivered us to this precarious, disorienting moment in history.West writes, “We were just a hair’s breadth from electing America’s first female president to succeed America’s first black president. We weren’t done, but we were doing it. And then, true to form—like the Balrog’s whip catching Gandalf by his little gray bootie, like the husband in a Lifetime movie hissing, ‘If I can’t have you, no one can’—white American voters shoved an incompetent, racist con man into the White House.”We cannot understand how we got here-how the land of the free became Trump’s America—without examining the chasm between who we are and who we think we are, without fact—checking the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and each other. The truth can transform us; there is witchcraft in it. Lindy West turns on the light.

    She contributes regularly to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right.Arranged into five sections--In the World, In the Audience, In the Gallery, On the Bookshelf, and Feel Free--this new collection poses questions we immediately recognize. What is The Social Network--and Facebook itself--really about? "It's a cruel portrait of us: 500 million sentient people entrapped in the recent careless thoughts of a Harvard sophomore." Why do we love libraries? "Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay." What will we tell our granddaughters about our collective failure to address global warming? "So I might say to her, look: the thing you have to appreciate is that we'd just been through a century of relativism and deconstruction, in which we were informed that most of our fondest-held principles were either uncertain or simple wishful thinking, and in many areas of our lives we had already been asked to accept that nothing is essential and everything changes--and this had taken the fight out of us somewhat."Gathering in one place for the first time previously unpublished work, as well as already classic essays, such as, "Joy," and, "Find Your Beach," Feel Free offers a survey of important recent events in culture and politics, as well as Smith's own life. Equally at home in the world of good books and bad politics, Brooklyn-born rappers and the work of Swiss novelists, she is by turns wry, heartfelt, indignant, and incisive--and never any less than perfect company. This is literary journalism at its zenith.

    He also loves Doctor Who. But can he bring his two great loves together? And does he have the right?In January 2011, Neil Perryman set out on an insane quest to make his wife Sue watch every episode of the classic series of Doctor Who from the very beginning. Even the ones that didn't exist any more. And so, over the next two and half years, Sue gamely watched them all: William Hartnell (the Miserable Git); Patrick Troughton (the Scruffy Drunk); Jon Pertwee (the Pompous Tory); Tom Baker (the Mad One); Peter Davison (the Fit One); Colin Baker (the Court Jester); Sylvester McCoy (the Crafty Sod) and Paul McGann (the One-Night Stand). The result was a wildly successful and hilariously revealing blog called Adventures with the Wife in Space.But the adventure continues. From awkward years at school, terrified of giant insects, Daleks and rugby players, to even more awkward years as an adult, terrified of unexpected parenthood and being called a Whovian, here Neil tells the all too true story of life as a Doctor Who fan. Funny, honest and surprisingly brave, he also captures perfectly the joys - and fears - of sharing the thing you love with the people you love.Adventures With the Wife in Space is, at its heart, the story of Doctor Who, and its fans, seen through the eyes of two people - one who knows almost nothing about the programme and another who knows way too much.