The Making of The Wandering Earth


Book Description

This handbook takes us through the making of The Wandering Earth, one of the highest-grossing non-English films of all time. It is a rare, in-depth, behind-the-scenes study of the making of a masterpiece, taking the reader through the entire production process of a landmark Chinese science fiction film. The book brings to life how The Wandering Earth was created, from words to images, by a young and innovative professional team assembled by director Frant Gwo. It discusses specialized details of the filmmaking process and the collaborative work of the crew and the cast involved to present an intuitive feeling of the film’s production. A step-by-step guide on the making of a radical large-scale film, this handbook critically examines its various stages such as its development and production stages – the planning, preparing, recruiting, setting up departments and processes; writing the screenplay; creating a visual style and the production design; and the principal photography; its challenging post-production stages – the editing, visual effects production, color mixing; dubbing, sound editing; publicity, etc. Further, the chapters in volume also explore how Chinese science fiction films disrupt the Western narrative context and provide the larger discourse on Chinese science fiction. Richly illustrated with exclusive first-hand visuals from the making of the film, this handbook, part of the Studies in Global Genre Fiction series, will be an essential read for professionals, scholars, researchers, and students of film and media production, film studies, popular culture, cultural studies, Chinese studies, world literature, and science fiction. It will also be of interest to the general reader interested in filmmaking.




The Wandering Earth


Book Description

From New York Times bestselling author Cixin Liu, The Wandering Earth is a science fiction short story collection featuring the title tale--the basis for the blockbuster international film, now streaming on Netflix. These ten stories, including five Chinese Galaxy Award-winners, are a blazingly original ode to planet Earth, its pasts, and its futures. Liu's fiction takes the reader to the edge of the universe and the end of time, to meet stranger fates than we could have ever imagined. With a melancholic and keen understanding of human nature, Liu's stories show humanity's attempts to reason, navigate, and above all, survive in a desolate cosmos. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




The Three-Body Problem


Book Description

The inspiration for the Netflix series 3 Body Problem! WINNER OF THE HUGO AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL Over 1 million copies sold in North America “A mind-bending epic.”—The New York Times • “War of the Worlds for the 21st century.”—The Wall Street Journal • “Fascinating.”—TIME • “Extraordinary.”—The New Yorker • “Wildly imaginative.”—Barack Obama • “Provocative.”—Slate • “A breakthrough book.”—George R. R. Martin • “Impossible to put down.”—GQ • “Absolutely mind-unfolding.”—NPR • “You should be reading Liu Cixin.”—The Washington Post The Three-Body Problem is the first novel in the groundbreaking, Hugo Award-winning series from China's most beloved science fiction author, Cixin Liu. Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision. The Three-Body Problem Series The Three-Body Problem The Dark Forest Death's End Other Books by Cixin Liu Ball Lightning Supernova Era To Hold Up the Sky The Wandering Earth A View from the Stars At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




Supernova Era


Book Description

From science fiction legend Cixin Liu, the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Three-Body Problem, comes a vision of the future that reads “like Ursula K Le Guin rewriting The Lord of the Flies for the quantum age.” (NPR). In those days, Earth was a planet in space. In those days, Beijing was a city on Earth. On this night, history as known to humanity came to an end. Eight light years away, a star has died, creating a supernova event that showers Earth in deadly levels of radiation. Within a year, everyone over the age of thirteen will die. And so the countdown begins. Parents apprentice their children and try to pass on the knowledge needed to keep the world running. But when the world is theirs, the last generation may not want to continue the legacy left to them. And in shaping the future however they want, will the children usher in an era of bright beginnings or final mistakes? "This audacious and ultimately optimistic early work will give Liu's English-reading fans a glimpse at his evolution as a writer and give any speculative fiction reader food for deep thought." -- Shelf Awareness At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




Storyworlds Across Media


Book Description

The proliferation of media and their ever-increasing role in our daily life has produced a strong sense that understanding media—everything from oral storytelling, literary narrative, newspapers, and comics to radio, film, TV, and video games—is key to understanding the dynamics of culture and society. Storyworlds across Media explores how media, old and new, give birth to various types of storyworlds and provide different ways of experiencing them, inviting readers to join an ongoing theoretical conversation focused on the question: how can narratology achieve media-consciousness? The first part of the volume critically assesses the cross- and transmedial validity of narratological concepts such as storyworld, narrator, representation of subjectivity, and fictionality. The second part deals with issues of multimodality and intermediality across media. The third part explores the relation between media convergence and transmedial storyworlds, examining emergent forms of storytelling based on multiple media platforms. Taken together, these essays build the foundation for a media-conscious narratology that acknowledges both similarities and differences in the ways media narrate.




A Planet for Rent


Book Description

The most successful and controversial Cuban Science Fiction writer of all time, Yoss (aka José Miguel Sánchez Gómez) is known for his acerbic portraits of the island under Communism. In his bestselling A Planet for Rent, Yoss pays homage to Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and 334 by Thomas M. Disch. A critique of Cuba in the nineties, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, A Planet for Rent marks the debut in English of an astonishingly brave and imaginative Latin American voice. Praise for Yoss “One of the most prestigious science fiction authors of the island.” —On Cuba Magazine "A gifted and daring writer." —David Iaconangelo "José Miguel Sánchez [Yoss] is Cuba’s most decorated science fiction author, who has cultivated the most prestige for this genre in the mainstream, and the only person of all the Island’s residents who lives by his pen.” —Cuenta Regresiva Born José Miguel Sánchez Gómez, Yoss assumed his pen name in 1988, when he won the Premio David Award in the science fiction category for Timshel. Together with his peculiar pseudonym, the author's aesthetic of an impentinent rocker has allowed him to stand out amongst his fellow Cuban writers. Earning a degree in Biology in 1991, he went on to graduate from the first ever course on Narrative Techniques at the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Center of Literary Training, in the year 1999. Today, Yoss writes both realistic and science fiction works. Alongside these novels, the author produces essays, Praise for, and compilations, and actively promotes the Cuban science fiction literary workshops, Espiral and Espacio Abierto. When he isn’t translating, David Frye teaches Latin American culture and society at the University of Michigan. Translations include First New Chronicle and Good Government by Guaman Poma de Ayala (Peru, 1615); The Mangy Parrot by José Joaquín Fernandez de Lizardi (Mexico, 1816), for which he received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship; Writing across Cultures: Narrative Transculturation in Latin America by Ángel Rama (Uruguay, 1982), and several Cuban and Spanish novels and poems.




The Redemption of Time


Book Description

Set in the universe of the New York Times bestselling Three-Body Problem trilogy, The Redemption of Time continues Cixin Liu’s multi-award-winning science fiction saga. This original story by Baoshu—published with Liu’s support—envisions the aftermath of the conflict between humanity and the extraterrestrial Trisolarans. In the midst of an interstellar war, Yun Tianming found himself on the front lines. Riddled with cancer, he chose to end his life, only to find himself flash frozen and launched into space where the Trisolaran First Fleet awaited. Captured and tortured beyond endurance for decades, Yun eventually succumbed to helping the aliens subjugate humanity in order to save Earth from complete destruction. Granted a healthy clone body by the Trisolarans, Yun has spent his very long life in exile as a traitor to the human race. Nearing the end of his existence at last, he suddenly receives another reprieve—and another regeneration. A consciousness calling itself The Spirit has recruited him to wage battle against an entity that threatens the existence of the entire universe. But Yun refuses to be a pawn again and makes his own plans to save humanity’s future... At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




Orphans of Earth


Book Description

The sole survivors of the human race... and their time is running out. In the wake of Earth’s fall, Peter Alander has just one choice: to use the alien Gifts left behind on his distant colony world to warn other missions of their impending demise, a second wave of alien ships, this time intent on destroying everything in their path. Without the Gifts, humanity would have no hope at all--although no one truly understands them, and it is becoming increasingly certain that the very use of them is what draws the enemy on. Out of the dark comes help from an entirely unexpected quarter. Peter Alander and his fellow survivors are not the only victims of the terrible Starfish. But what if the cost of that help is too high? What if the price is humanity itself? “This book shines” —Cinescape “High adventure in deep space for fans of far-future SF.” —Library Journal Nominated for the Aurealis and Ditmar Awards.




Death's End


Book Description

Mutually assured destruction has led to decades of peace between humanity and the Trisolarans, but a new force is awakening and this delicate balance can no longer hold... Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge. With human science advancing daily and the Trisolarans adopting Earth culture, it seems that the two civilizations will soon be able to co-exist peacefully as equals without the terrible threat of mutually assured annihilation. But the peace has also made humanity complacent. Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the early twenty-first century, awakens from hibernation in this new age. She brings with her knowledge of a long-forgotten program dating from the beginning of the Trisolar Crisis, and her very presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle? Death's End is the New York Times bestselling conclusion to Cixin Liu's tour-de-force series that began with The Three-Body Problem. "The War of the Worlds for the twenty-first century . . . Packed with a sense of wonder." --The Wall Street Journal "A meditation on technology, progress, morality, extinction, and knowledge that doubles as a cosmos- in-the-balance thriller." --NPR The Remembrance of Earth's Past Trilogy The Three-Body Problem The Dark Forest Death's End Other Books Ball Lightning (forthcoming)




Sea of Dreams


Book Description

The first in a new series of graphic novels from Hugo Award-winning author Liu Cixin and Talos Press An annual ice sculpture festival draws the attention of an extraterrestrial visitor, who learns how to create such art and decides to use local resources to sculpt a piece in a gesture of goodwill. All the water in the ocean is sent to the stratosphere, where the ice sculptor uses splendid techniques to create crystal dominoes scattered by a giant of the cosmos. In the world of the ice sculptor, art is the sole reason for civilization’s existence. After the ice sculptor creates the pinnacle of beauty, but also brings forth devastation and disaster, humanity decides during Earth’s last breaths to fight for their survival. The first of sixteen new graphic novels from Liu Cixin and Talos Press, Sea of Dreams is an epic tale of the future that all science fiction fans will enjoy.




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