Speculative science fiction, with its underlying socio-political dialogue, represents an important intersection of popular culture and public discourse. As a pop culture text, the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars offers critical commentary on contemporary issues, marking a moment of interplay whereby author and audience come together in what Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin called collaborative meaning making. This book critically examines the series as a voice in the ...

Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better to be immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Since Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions first appeared, David Benatar's distinctive anthology designed to introduce students to the key existential questions of philosophy has won a devoted following among users in a variety of upper-level and even introductory courses.

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. In the morning, the treating doctor came to Osnat and Avner and told them they had a sweet girl. Avner smiled and replied that indeed she was a nice, good, and wonderful girl. At that point, however, the doctor clarified that Smadar had been diagnosed with juvenile diabetes — a condition that would accompany her throughout her life. While there is no cure for this illness, it is certainly possible to maintain a normal daily routine.Smadar ...

Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better to be immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Since Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions first appeared, David Benatar's distinctive anthology designed to introduce students to the key existential questions of philosophy has won a devoted following among users in a variety of upper-level and even introductory courses.

She wants the adventure of a lifetime; he needs to heal old family wounds. If they are going to help each other, they cannot fall in love along the way.Polly Phillips is headed west to help her best friend get married. She dreams of leaving the confines of the city behind and embracing cowboys, horses, and a sky bluer than anything she had ever seen. Why she even might try to snag a husband for herself! How lucky that she runs into a group of cowboys when her stage...

I’ve been a prisoner for five hundred and fifty days.Okay, technically I’m just stuck in my aunt’s four–story tower. And yes, Aunt Agatha is more "eccentric book club queen" than evil captor. But still—no piano, no freedom, and no escape from my own mistakes.Like almost marrying a guy who pretended to love me just to get back at my brother.So when Ryder Hawthorne—my brother’s best friend and absurdly hot Hollywood stuntman—shows up climbing my actual tower, I assume...

Reading itself is travel in Derek Gromadzki’s first book, Pilgrimage Suites, an outing across an insular medieval landscape as rich in its registers of language as in its flora or fauna. This book is neither history nor story, though it retains characteristics of each. Like history, it perpetuates retrograde speculation while maintaining the narrated sequencing of incident that is the common stock and trade of story. In the heyday of medieval pilgrimages, English underwent radical changes....

When a hard hit to the head during a youth football game took Derek Ruth to heaven, he stood face-to-face with Jesus.A gifted multi-sport athlete and a devout Roman Catholic, Derek Ruth was barely one month shy of his thirteenth birthday when he suffered a traumatic brain injury on the football field. As his family, friends, and even competitors gathered, they prepared for the worst while praying for a miracle, as Derek was on an eight-minute life-flight to the hospital where the h...

Suite for Three Voices is a dance of prose genres, teeming with intense human life in all its humor and sorrow. A son uncovers the horrors of his father’s wartime experience, a hitchhiker in a muumuu guards a mysterious parcel, a young man foresees his brother’s brush with death on September 11. A Victorian poetess encounters space aliens and digital archives, a runner hears the voice of a dead friend in the song of an indigo bunting, a teacher seeks wisdom from h...

While previous work on the Star Wars universe charts the Campbellian mythic arcs, political representations, and fan reactions associated with the films, this volume takes a transmedial approach to the material, recognizing that Star Wars TV projects interact with and relate to other Star Wars texts. The chapters in this volume take as a basic premise that the televisual entrants into the Star Wars transmedia storyworld are both important texts in the hi...