This rich collection, filled with interviews, essays, and color reproductions of testosterone-heavy thirty-five-cent magazines with names like Man's Exploits, Rage, and Escape to Adventure (to name a few), illustrates the culture created to help veterans confront the confusion of jobs, girls, and the Cold War on their return from World War II and the Korean War.Contributions from the original men's magazine talent like Bruce Jay Friedman, Mario Puzo, and Mort Künstler bring the reader inside the offices, showing us how the writers, illustrators, editors, and publishers put together decades of what were then called "armpit slicks." Reproductions of original paintings from Norman Saunders, Künstler, and Norm Eastman are featured within, and Bill Devine's annotated checklist of the many thousands of adventure magazines is essential for collectors of the genre.The expanded paperback edition includes wartime illustrations and advertisements from mass-produced magazines that preview the xenophobia and racist ideas later seen throughout men's adventure magazines of the '50s and '60s.

    This book presents the best of them: pipe-smoking robots, clairvoyant pennies, zoo jailbreaks, literary cannibals, corned beef in space, revolving squirrels, disappearing Scottish lighthouse keepers, reincarnated pussycats, dueling Churchills, horse spectacles, onrushing molasses, and hundreds more. Plus the obscure words, odd inventions, puzzles and paradoxes that have made the website a quirky favorite with millions of readers -- hundreds of examples of the marvelous, the diverting, and the strange, now in a portable format to occupy your idle hours.

    Loren Rhoads, creator and editor of the magazine, has compiled some of her favorite stories from all ten issues in this sometimes shocking, occasionally gruesome, always fascinating anthology. This quirky book is filled with tales from ordinary people -- who just happen to have eccentric, peculiar interests. Ranging from the outrageous (attending a Black Mass, fishing bodies out of San Francisco Bay, making fake snuff films) to the more "mundane" (visiting a torture museum, tracking real vampires through San Francisco), this curiously enjoyable collection of stories, complete with illustrations and informative asides, will entertain and haunt readers long after the final page is turned.

    Leader of the Symbolist movement, he exerted a powerful influence on modern literature and thought, which can be traced in the works of Paul Valéry, W.B. Yeats, and Jacques Derrida. From his early twenties until the time of his death, Mallarmé produced poems of astonishing originality and beauty, many of which have become classics.In the Collected Poems, Henry Weinfield brings the oeuvre of this European master to life for an English-speaking audience, essentially for the first time. All the poems that the author chose to retain are here, superbly rendered by Weinfield in a translation that comes remarkably close to Mallarmé's own voice. Weinfield conveys not simply the meaning but the spirit and music of the French originals, which appear en face.Whether writing in verse or prose, or inventing an altogether new genre—as he did in the amazing "Coup de Dés"—Mallarmé was a poet of both supreme artistry and great difficulty. To illuminate Mallarmé's poetry for twentieth-century readers, Weinfield provides an extensive commentary that is itself an important work of criticism. He sets each poem in the context of the work as a whole and defines the poems' major symbols. Also included are an introduction and a bibliography.Publication of this collection is a major literary event in the English-speaking world: here at last is the work of a major figure, masterfully translated.

    Angel-like Blengins with butterfly wings, natural catastrophes, innocent girls, and murderous soldiers all appear in Darger's scenes, which are reproduced in this book in double-page and gatefold spreads. In the volume's introductory essay, Klaus Biesenbach examines the radical originality of Darger's art, including his use of collage, incorporation of religious themes and iconography, and frequent juxtaposition of innocence with violence. An essay by Brooke Davis Anderson illuminates Darger's source materials and techniques. Michael Bonesteel puts Darger's life in the context of his work and selects key texts to accompany the illustrations. The book also includes for the first time the text of Darger's History of My Life, A" the artist's autobiography. The only book of its kind, Henry Darger offers an authoritative, balanced, and insightful look at an American master

    DickIn late January 2006, a young robotocist on the way to Google headquarters lost an overnight bag on a flight somewhere between Dallas and Las Vegas. In it was a fully functional head of the android replica of Philip K. Dick, cult science-fiction writer and counterculture guru. It has never been recovered.In a story that echoes some of the most paranoid fantasies of a Dick novel, readers get a fascinating inside look at the scientists and technology that made this amazing android possible. The author, who was a fellow researcher at the University of Memphis Institute of Intelligent Systems while the android was being built, introduces readers to the cutting-edge technology in robotics, artificial intelligence, and sculpture that came together in this remarkable machine and captured the imagination of scientists, artists, and science-fiction fans alike. And there are great stories about Dick himself his inspired yet deeply pessimistic worldview, his bizarre lifestyle, and his enduring creative legacy. In the tradition of popular science classics like "Packing for Mars" and "The Disappearing Spoon," "How to Build an Android" is entertaining and informative popular science at its best."

    But when she starts receiving notes, she knows her perfect life is under threat. She thought she’d managed to put the past behind her, but someone seems determined to reveal her secret.Meanwhile, girls are vanishing in the area and Olivia fears for her family’s safety.Has someone discovered the real reason she left Scotland all those years ago?And does her secret have links to the recent disappearances? When someone is out to get you, is there anywhere you can hide? Fractured Winter is a compelling and suspenseful psychosocial mystery it will appeal to fans of authors like LJ Ross, Lesley Kara and Faith Martin.

    P. Lovecraft, here are nearly sixty unforgettable stories that ignore the confines of space and time to offer, among other times and places: a cabinet of curiosities in contemporary Cairo, an alchemical ceiling in 18th-century Naples, the hallucinatory inner worlds of psychotics, anthropomorphic planets, and an Old West ruled by necromancy.This expanded, revised edition collects the complete short stories of one of the most immaginative writers of our time.

     As the first illusionist witch able to syphon magic from everything and everyone, I’m a little sought after. Hundreds of supernatural academies have offered me a place, but there’s only one I’ll attend. The Undercover Witch Academy. Why? Dracian Dread. The male witch who killed my parents is already a top student at the academy, beloved by all. But, not for long. Soon, everyone will know who Dracian really is, and I’ll be the one to tell them. When students start to lose their magic, all eyes turn to me. Classes are postponed as an investigation gets underway. There’s no proof that it’s me, and it’s not, let me assure you, so I have to find a way to prove my innocence. Unfortunately, the only ally I have is none other than Dracian Dread, the man I love to hate. Will I be able to find the real culprit before every student loses their magic for good? This set contains the whole trilogy

    Quake, now in development as a film by Repo Man director Alex Cox, is a deadpan, nihilistic look at how fear unravels people?s emotions, how terror can liberate, and how people manage to survive?even panhandler drifters, Hollywood Cretins, and hippies. A true underground classic.

    A century later, Jarry is firmly established as one of the leading figures of the artistic avant-garde. Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, Gilles Deleuze, Jean Baudrillard, Philip K. Dick, Paul McCartney, DJ Spooky, Peter Greenaway, and J. G. Ballard are among his many admirers. A community of scholars and artists maintain a posthumous dialogue with Jarry's ideas through the Collège de 'Pataphysique in Paris (named after the "science of imaginary solutions" he conceived), while a steady stream of books on twentieth-century drama pay tribute to his absurd and grotesque play, Ubu Roi. Even so, most people today tend to think of Jarry only as the author of that play, and of his life as a string of outlandish "ubuesque" anecdotes, often recounted with wild inaccuracy. In this first full-length critical biography of Jarry in English, Alastair Brotchie reconstructs the life of a man intent on inventing (and destroying) himself, not to mention his world, and the "philosophy" that defined their relation. In short, Brotchie gives us the narrative version of what Jarry himself produced: a pataphysical life. Drawing on a wealth of new material, Brotchie alternates chapters of biographical narrative with chapters that connect themes, obsessions, and undercurrents that relate to the life.The anecdotes remain, and are even augmented: Jarry's assumption of the "ubuesque," his inversions of everyday behavior (such as eating backwards, from cheese to soup), his exploits with gun and bicycle, and his herculean feats of drinking. But Brotchie distinguishes between Jarry's purposely playing the fool and deeper nonconformities that appear essential to his writing and his thought, both of which remain a vital subterranean influence to this day.

    Preston Wildey-King, 14, lives in Malibu with his widowed mother and sister. He is literally addicted to Pepsi, to the point that all his thoughts and fantasies are focused on it. When he's not drinking it he's dreaming about it, even creating art and poetry based on it. It amounts to his religion (Preston could have written "Breathtaking Design Strategy", the 2009 corporate document elevating Pepsi and its logo to metaphysical glory). He is deeply in love with Peggy, but she dumps him after an argument over his Pepsi habit. His friend Ryan is bisexual and desires him. His math tutor seduces him, and when he's sent to juvie after robbing a convenience store (mesmerized by a crate of Pepsi, of course, he sits down and drinks some instead of running) he's molested by a guard. Preston's choices and misfortunes are chronicled with that distinctive Gibbons flair, full of elegant metaphors, quirky slang and over- and undercurrents of emotion that take on a life of their own. Good luck finding it. Only five libraries are known to have it, but apparently bootleg copies exist.

    I cannot promise the reader that at any point he will shake his sides with laughter, but I can promise him a wry pleasure to be derived from the skilful dissection of folly.” Bertrand Russell Professor Mmaa’s Lecture, given to a packed auditorium, deals with the habits, mentality and culture of Homo sapiens. But both the professor and his entire audience are termites; the whole story is set inside a termite mound.Naturally, Themerson’s attempt to comprehend humankind by examining how they would have been understood by insects is very funny. Termites have no sight, just a sense of smell, and can only explain their surroundings and lives through their insects’ angle on the world. The closing scene of the novel reveals what the termites have been researching and what has happened to their mound, giving the whole story an ironic twist.But this novel has much more to offer. Themerson’s heightened expertise and instinct for parodying the language and methods of scholarship, and the morals and manners of the academic world, produces a merciless and comical survey of philosophical views and attitudes. He pillories religion, language, reason and scholarship, as insect thinkers with suspiciously familiar names scuttle through the pages of the novel. A great many cases of dogmatic thinking and narrow-mindedness are exposed to ridicule. The only path that seems to earn the author’s approval is pluralism of ideas. You can see just why Bertrand Russell calls this novel a useful gospel for sceptics.Professor Mmaa’s Lecture is in the tradition of philosophical satire, whose most famous proponents are Voltaire and Swift, and is a rare incidence of light yet deep prose that can be read with great pleasure on several levels.

    It tells the story of one man drifting through America, east coast to west, main stem to side street, endlessly searching for "three hots and a flop"--food and a place to sleep. Kromer scans, in first-person voice, the scattered events, the stultifying sameness, of "life on the vag"--the encounters with cops, the window panes that separate hunger and a "feed," the bartering with prostitutes and homosexuals.In "Michael Kohler," Kromer's unfinished novel, the harsh existence of coal miners in Pennsylvania is told in a committed, political voice that reveals Kromer's developing affinity with leftist writers including Lincoln Steffens and Theodore Dreiser. An exploration of Kromer's proletarian roots, "Michael Kohler" was to be a political novel, a story of labor unions and the injustices of big management. Kromer's other work ranges from his college days, when he wrote a sarcastic expose of the bums in his hometown titled "Pity the Poor Panhandler: $2 an Hour Is All He Gets," to the sensitive pieces of his later life--short stories, articles, and book reviews written more out of an aching understanding of suffering than from the slick formulas of politics.Waiting for Nothing remains, however, Kromer's most powerful achievement, a work Steffens called "realism to the nth degree." Collected here as the major part of Kromer's oeuvre, Waiting for Nothing traces the author's personal struggle to preserve human virtues and emotions in the face of a brutal and dehumanizing society.

    But how will they respond when love seems to blossom between local man Gavin Hamilton and the beautiful pearl-fisher Effie? The Pearl-fishers is a classic love story and the master storyteller’s last novel.