Alice's Adventures


Book Description

The author of "Batman Unmasked" and "Using the Force", turns his attention to Lewis Carroll and Alice taking the reader through a revealing tour of late 20th Century popular culture, following Alice and her creator wherever they go. The result is an in-depth analysis of how one original creation symbolizes different things to different people.




Automated Alice


Book Description

A trequel to Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. In this book, Alice travels through time, tumbling from the Victorian age to land in 1998, in Manchester, a small town in the North of England.




Victorian Afterlife


Book Description




Alice's Wonderland


Book Description

Presents a history of Alice's adventures in Wonderland, discussing works that were inspired by Lewis Carroll's classic tale.




Beyond Cyberpunk


Book Description

This book is a collection of essays that considers the continuing cultural relevance of the cyberpunk genre into the new millennium. Cyberpunk is no longer an emergent phenomenon, but in our digital age of CGI-driven entertainment, the information economy, and globalized capital, we have never more been in need of a fiction capable of engaging with a world shaped by information technology. The essays in explore our cyberpunk realities to soberly reconsider Eighties-era cyberpunk while also mapping contemporary cyberpunk. The contributors seek to move beyond the narrow strictures of cyberpunk as defined in the Eighties and contribute to an ongoing discussion of how to negotiate exchanges among information technologies, global capitalism, and human social existence. The essays offer a variety of perspectives on cyberpunk’s diversity and how this sub-genre remains relevant amidst its transformation from a print fiction genre into a more generalized set of cultural practices, tackling the question of what it is that cyberpunk narratives continue to offer us in those intersections of literary, cultural, theoretical, academic, and technocultural environments.




Anti-Tales


Book Description

The anti-(fairy) tale has long existed in the shadow of the traditional fairy tale as its flipside or evil twin. According to André Jolles in Einfache Formen (1930), such Antimärchen are contemporaneous with some of the earliest known oral variants of familiar tales. While fairy tales are generally characterised by a “spirit of optimism” (Tolkien) the anti-tale offers us no such assurances; for every “happily ever after,” there is a dissenting “they all died horribly.” The anti-tale is, however, rarely an outright opposition to the traditional form itself. Inasmuch as the anti-hero is not a villain, but may possess attributes of the hero, the anti-tale appropriates aspects of the fairy tale form, (and its equivalent genres) and re-imagines, subverts, inverts, deconstructs or satirises elements of these to present an alternate narrative interpretation, outcome or morality. In this collection, Little Red Riding Hood retaliates against the wolf, Cinderella’s stepmother provides her own account of events, and “Snow White” evolves into a postmodern vampire tale. The familiar becomes unfamiliar, revealing the underlying structures, dynamics, fractures and contradictions within the borrowed tales. Over the last half century, this dissident tradition has become increasingly popular, inspiring numerous writers, artists, musicians and filmmakers. Although anti-tales abound in contemporary art and popular culture, the term has been used sporadically in scholarship without being developed or defined. While it is clear that the aesthetics of postmodernism have provided fertile creative grounds for this tradition, the anti-tale is not just a postmodern phenomenon; rather, the “postmodern fairy tale” is only part of the picture. Broadly interdisciplinary in scope, this collection of twenty-two essays and artwork explores various manifestations of the anti-tale, from the ancient to the modern including romanticism, realism and surrealism along the way.




Alternative Alices


Book Description




Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature


Book Description

Fantasy is a genre in motion, gradually expanding its reach and historical sources to embrace a global identity Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature, Second Edition is a snapshot of the genre in this moment, identifying new themes and sources that are emerging to inspire, enhance and invigorate the published works of fantasy writers.




Alternative Alices


Book Description

Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871) are among the most enduring works in the English language. In the decades following their publication, writers on both sides of the Atlantic produced no fewer than two hundred imitations, revisions, and parodies of Carroll's fantasies for children. Carolyn Sigler has gathered the most interesting and original of these responses to the Alice books, many of them long out of print. Produced between 1869 and 1930, these works trace the extraordinarily creative, and often critical, response of diverse writers. These writers—male and female, radical and conservative—appropriated Carroll's structures, motifs, and themes in their Alice-inspired works in order to engage in larger cultural debates. Their stories range from Christina Rossetti's angry subversion of Alice's adventures, Speaking Likenesses (1874), to G.E. Farrow's witty fantasy adventure, The Wallypug of Why (1895), to Edward Hope's hilarious parody of social and political foibles, Alice in the Delighted States (1928). Anyone who has ever followed Alice down the rabbit hole will enjoy the adventures of her literary siblings in the wide Wonderland of the human imagination.




Testing JavaScript Applications


Book Description

Automated testing will help you write high-quality software in less time, with more confidence, fewer bugs, and without constant manual oversight. Testing JavaScript Applications is a guide to building a comprehensive and reliable JS application testing suite, covering both how to write tests and how JS testing tools work under the hood. You''ll learn from Lucas de Costa, a core contributor to popular JS testing libraries, as he shares a quality mindset for making testing decisions that deliver a real contribution to your business. You''ll benefit from informative explanations and diagrams, easily-transferable code samples, and useful tips on using the latest and most consolidated libraries and frameworks of the JavaScript ecosystem. about the technology No developer wants to waste time making sure every application feature still works whenever they push new code to production. Thankfully, automated testing delivers quick and precise feedback on whether your application still functions correctly every time you update it. With automated testing, you can validate your application with a single command--and unlike humans, machines don''t forget steps or make mistakes! about the book Testing JavaScript Applications is a guide to creating JavaScript tests that are targeted to your application''s specific needs. Dripping with the insight author Lucas da Costa has developed as a core contributor to some of the most popular JS testing libraries, this book offers dozens of detailed code samples that you can apply to your own projects. You''ll learn how to write tests for both backend and frontend applications, covering the full spectrum of testing types so you can pick an approach that''s right for you. Taking on the role of a developer for a bakery''s web store, you''ll learn to validate different aspects including databases, third-party services, and how to spin-up a real browser instance to interact with the entire application. All examples are delivered using the popular testing tool Jest and modern packages of the JavaScript ecosystem. what''s inside Writing practical tests that make a real business contribution Writing tests for both front-end and back-end applications Managing the costs and complexity of your tests Practicing test-driven development Dealing with external dependencies, like databases or third-party APIs Supporting tests by creating a "culture of quality" about the reader For junior JavaScript developers. No testing experience required. about the author Lucas da Costa is a core maintainer of Chai and Sinon.JS, two of the most popular testing tools in the JavaScript ecosystem. He has also contributed to Jest and other relevant open-source projects. Lucas is committed to a culture of sharing and has spoken at major software engineering conferences, including JSConf Colombia, FluentConf, HolyJS, CityJSConf London, and many others.