A study of Smith's life and work as well as the impact that his fiction has had upon literary culture.

Many believe that Robert A. Heinlein was the most important American science fiction writer of the 20th century. This is the first detailed critical examination of his entire career. It is not a biography that is being done in a two-volume work by William Patterson. Instead, this book looks at each piece of fiction (and a few pieces of sf-related nonfiction) that Heinlein wrote, chronologically by publication, in order to consider what each contributes to his overall accomplishment. The aim is to be fair, to look clearly at the strengths and weaknesses of the writings that have inspired generations of readers and writers.

A study of Smith's life and work as well as the impact that his fiction has had upon literary culture.

Jake Doherty calls himself a mariner. Others describe him as a yachtsman on a tight budget. He intends to sail across the Atlantic to Europe in two months time. On the day the story begins, he rides the wind to a different destination. It is an unpromising evening. His girlfriend breaks up with him, and a strange woman named Mary clobbers him with a roundhouse slap for an unintended insult. He lurches out of the waterfront bar where his luck had turned so sour, and receives another slap in the face from a roaring March gale. Offering no resistance, Jake turns and puts the wind on his back. He drifts across town, unaware that the freezing wind has his fate as well as his body in its grip, and the voyage has already begun. Mary is not violent by nature, just sensitive about certain things. Her world is full of signs and affirmations, a place where even trivial, everyday occurrences carry significance and portent. She is certain that she is possessed, but considers possession a good, positive thing which has aided her in the years since her once promising life fell apart. She wanders the streets of Portland, Maine trying to help those even less fortunate. Jake is drawn in by Mary, enthralled by her perplexing mind and unshakable spirit. Together they navigate the pubs and sidewalks of Portland, forming a bond that Mary feels can only be fate. By the end of May, Jake has set sail and his 35 foot cutter, the Rapparee, is nosing into the long Atlantic swells. He is on his way to Europe, but it is not to be the quiet and lonely voyage of reflection and atonement that he had planned.

The work of Richard Wagner is a continuing source of artistic inspiration and ideological controversy in literature, philosophy, and music, as well as cinema. In Wagner and Cinema, a diverse group of established and emerging scholars examines Wagner's influence on cinema from the silent era to the present. The essays in this collection engage in a critical dialogue with existing studies extending and renovating current theories related to the topic and propose unexplored topics and new methodological perspectives. The contributors discuss films ranging from the 1913 biopic of Wagner to Ridley Scott s Gladiator, with essays on silent cinema, film scoring, Wagner in Hollywood, German cinema, and Wagner beyond the soundtrack."