John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, Updike published more than twenty novels, more than a dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, art and literary criticism and children's books during his career.
Lyon Sprague de Camp was an American author of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction literature. In a career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, both novels and works of non-fiction, including biographies of other fantasy authors. He was a major figure in science fiction in the 1930s and 1940s.
Philip Milton Roth was an American novelist and short-story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity. He first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Ten years later, he published the bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's literary alter ego, narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Philip Roth narrates some of his others, such as the alternate history The Plot Against America.
David Brooks is a Canadian-born American conservative political and cultural commentator who writes for The New York Times. He has worked as a film critic for The Washington Times, a reporter and later op-ed editor for The Wall Street Journal, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard from its inception, a contributing editor at Newsweek, and The Atlantic Monthly, in addition to working as a commentator on NPR and the PBS NewsHour.
The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul is a 1981 collection of essays and other texts about the nature of the mind and the self, edited with commentary by philosophers Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett. The texts range from early philosophical and fictional musings on a subject that could seemingly only be examined in the realm of thought, to works from the twentieth century where the nature of the self became a viable topic for scientific study.
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow was an American novelist, editor, and professor, best known for his works of historical fiction.
The Chrysalids is a science fiction novel by British writer John Wyndham, first published in 1955 by Michael Joseph. It is the least typical of Wyndham's major novels, but regarded by some as his best. An early manuscript version was entitled Time for a Change.
Colin McGinn is a British philosopher. He has held teaching posts and professorships at University College London, the University of Oxford, Rutgers University, and the University of Miami.
Harold Garfinkel was an American sociologist and ethnomethodologist, who taught at the University of California, Los Angeles. Having developed and established ethnomethodology as a field of inquiry in sociology, he is probably best known for Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967), a collection of articles. Selections from unpublished materials were later published in two volumes: Seeing Sociologically and Ethnomethodology's Program. Moreover, during his time at University of Newark, which became Rutgers University, he enrolled in Theory of Accounts, a course that covered accounting and bookkeeping procedures. Where from this class "even in setting up an accounting sheet, he was theorizing the various categories into which the numbers would be placed" which furthered his understanding of accountability.
The Farseer trilogy is a series of fantasy novels by American author Robin Hobb, published from 1995 to 1997. It is often described as epic fantasy, and as a character-driven and introspective work. Set in and around the fictional realm of the Six Duchies, it tells the story of FitzChivalry Farseer, an illegitimate son of a prince who is trained as an assassin. Political machinations within the royal family threaten his life, and the kingdom is beset by naval raids. Fitz possesses two forms of magic: the telepathic Skill that runs in the royal line, and the socially despised Wit that enables bonding with animals. The series follows his life as he seeks to restore stability to the kingdom.
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon is a 2006 book by American philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett, in which the author argues that religion is in need of scientific analysis so that its nature and future may be better understood. The "spell" that requires "breaking" is not religious belief itself but the belief that it is off-limits to or beyond scientific inquiry.
Robert Stephen Briffault was a French surgeon who found fame as a social anthropologist and later in life as a novelist.
The non-fiction novel is a literary genre that, broadly speaking, depicts non-fictional elements, such as real historical figures and actual events, woven together with fictitious conversations and uses the storytelling techniques of fiction. The non-fiction novel is an otherwise loosely defined and flexible genre. The genre is sometimes referred to using the slang term "faction", a portmanteau of the words fact and fiction.
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics to abstract concepts such as nations, emotions, and natural forces, such as seasons and weather. Both have ancient roots as storytelling and artistic devices, and most cultures have traditional fables with anthropomorphized animals as characters. People have also routinely attributed human emotions and behavioral traits to wild as well as domesticated animals.
Mating (1991) is a novel by American author Norman Rush. It is a first-person narrative by an unnamed American anthropology graduate student in Botswana around 1980. It focuses on her relationship with Nelson Denoon, a controversial American social scientist who has founded an experimental matriarchal village in the Kalahari desert.
The 2009 American science fiction film Avatar has provoked vigorous discussion of a wide variety of cultural, social, political, and religious themes identified by critics and commentators, and the film's writer and director James Cameron has responded that he hoped to create an emotional reaction and to provoke public conversation about these topics. The broad range of Avatar's intentional or perceived themes has prompted some reviewers to call it "an all-purpose allegory" and "the season's ideological Rorschach blot". One reporter even suggested that the politically charged punditry has been "misplaced": reviewers should have seized on the opportunity to take "a break from their usual fodder of public policy and foreign relations" rather than making an ideological battlefield of this "popcorn epic".
The Lives of Animals (1999) is a metafictional novella about animal rights by the South African novelist J. M. Coetzee, recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. The work is introduced by Amy Gutmann and followed by a collection of responses by Marjorie Garber, Peter Singer, Wendy Doniger and Barbara Smuts. It was published by Princeton University Press as part of its Human Values series.
Will Brooker is a writer and academic, professor of film and cultural studies at Kingston University and an author of several books of cultural studies dealing with elements of modern pop culture and fandom, specifically Batman, Star Wars and Alice in Wonderland.
Dark Eden is a social science fiction novel by British author Chris Beckett, first published in the United Kingdom in 2012. The novel explores the disintegration of a small group of a highly inbred people, descendants of two individuals whose spaceship crashed on a rogue planet they call Eden. It is the first in the Eden trilogy, followed by Mother of Eden and Daughter of Eden.
Making Do is a 1963 novel written by Paul Goodman and published by Macmillan.
