Can you imagine swapping your body for a virtual version? This technology-based look at the afterlife chronicles America's fascination with death and reveals how digital immortality may become a reality. The Internet has reinvented the paradigm of life and death: social media enables a discourse with loved ones long after their deaths, while gaming sites provide opportunities for multiple lives and life forms. In this thought-provoking work, author Kevin O'Neill examines America's concept of afterlife—as imagined in cyberspace—and considers how technologies designed to emulate immortality present serious challenges to our ideas about human identity and to our religious beliefs about heaven and hell. The first part of the work—covering the period between 1840 and 1860—addresses post-mortem photography, cemetery design, and spiritualism. The second section discusses Internet afterlife, including online memorials and cemeteries; social media legacy pages; and sites that curate passwords, bequests, and final requests. The work concludes with chapters on the transhumanist movement, the philosophical and religious debates about Internet immortality, and the study of technologies attempting to extend life long after the human form ceases.

The Afterlife in Popular Culture: Heaven, Hell, and the Underworld in the American Imagination gives students a fresh look at how Americans view the afterlife, helping readers understand how it's depicted in popular culture. What happens to us when we die? The book seeks to explore how that question has been answered in American popular culture. It begins with five framing essays that provide historical and intellectual background on ideas about the afterlife in Western culture. These essays are followed by more than 100 entries, each focusing on specific cultural products or authors that feature the afterlife front and center. Entry topics include novels, film, television shows, plays, works of nonfiction, graphic novels, and more, all of which address some aspect of what may await us after our passing. This book is unique in marrying a historical overview of the afterlife with detailed analyses of particular cultural products, such as films and novels. In addition, it covers these topics in nonspecialist language, written with a student audience in mind. The book provides historical context for contemporary depictions of the afterlife addressed in the entries, which deal specifically with work produced in the 20th and 21st centuries. Provides readers with an encyclopedic treatment of the afterlife in American popular culture, without any religious or moral biases Connects depictions of the afterlife with general social trends Contests the idea that Americans fear death by showing the plethora of examples of the afterlife shown in film, television, and more Presents a serious analysis of vampires, zombies, and other fictional archetypes without becoming hyper-academic or humorous

Continuing in the adventurous tradition of their self-contained thriller 'Heart of Ice', Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill present a blazing narrative that rampages through 20th century culture and portrays the volatile convergence of four startling and striking women in a place of long totalitatiran shadows.

It's 1925, 15 years after the death of Captain Nemo, when his daughter Janni Dakkar launches a grand Antarctic expedition to lay the old man's burdensome legacy to rest. Accompanied by Nemo's shipmate Ishmael, Janni embarks on a perilous journey to the bottom of the world. But, on route, she is pursued by employees of the megalomaniacal Charles Foster Kane, who is seeking the return of plundered loot.

Most intervention research in education aims to demonstrate the efficacy of specific programs and practices. The assumption is that if researchers can produce evidence-based programs that work in a variety of settings, educators will take them up on a large scale. Unfortunately, this approach largely neglects the role that out-of-school experiences can and do play in learning, and assumes that contexts are peripheral to intervention success. However, we know from decades of research that contexts profoundly shape the nature and effects of interventions. Further, researchers may produce interventions that are not usable or sustainable when they do so without incorporating the voices of educators, community members, and families. Design-based research offers a more collaborative approach to organizing for equitable educational change. This approach to developing and testing innovations in classrooms (and other settings) intertwines design and research closely. The essays in this volume draw on inspiration from the work of L.S. Vygotsky and his colleagues, highlighting ways that design research can foreground cultural, historical, and institutional processes as central constituents of learning. Each essay considers concrete ways that institutional contexts shape interventions; how design can support the agency of local participants in developing new learning arrangements and resources; and how communities can organize both with and without researcher-interventionists to address historical inequities linked to race, language, and poverty. As an ensemble, these essays offer productive new approaches for expanding design research methodologies to encompass both issues and contexts that have often been absent in most learning sciences research. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of the Learning Sciences.

THE ULTIMATE 2000 AD MIX-TAPE HAS ARRIVED! Best of 2000 AD is a landmark series from the cult comic, bursting with our greatest stories for a new generation of readers. Every Best of 2000 AD contains a mix of modern classics and gems from the vault. In each edition you'll find an explosive new Judge Dredd adventure, fresh essays by prominent popular culture writers, a graphic novel-length feature presentation by global legends and a vintage Dredd case. In this volume: Judge Dredd hunts untraceable assassins firing Magic Bullets by Al Ewing and Colin Wilson; even robots get the Red Planet Blues from Alan Moore, Steve Dillon and John Higgins; not even Mega City One's brightest can escape The Vampire Effect; join the front line of the resistance against intergalactic bigots in Gothic masterpiece Nemesis The Warlock! Boasting brand new covers from an all-star line-up of artists including Becky Cloonan (The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys) and Charlie Adlard (The Walking Dead) with designer Tom Muller (X-Men), Best of 2000 AD is the essential gateway into the Galaxy's Greatest Comic.

45 YEARS OF 2000 AD To celebrate forty-five years of bringing Thrill-Power to Earthlets everywhere, Tharg the Mighty has tasked forty-five of Earth's most popular comic book artists and illustrators to interpret some of the galaxy of characters featured in the pages of the Galaxy's Greatest Comic, 2000 AD, over the last four and a half decades. This book features a frontispiece by Stewart K. Moore and all-new work by Jamie Smart (Bunny vs Monkey), Hannah Templer (GLOW, TMNT), Michael Allred (Madman, Silver Surfer), Kevin O'Neill (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), Sean Phillips (Reckless, The Fade Out), Colleen Doran (Sandman, A Distant Soil) and many more, bringing new life and fresh perspectives to some of comics' greatest creations.

Two of the greatest British comics of all time join forces- and bring you seven new stories of blazing Battle Action! Writer Garth Ennis (Preacher, The Boys) presents his own take on the classic characters of Battle and Action. Ace fighter pilot Johnny Red battles Skreamer of the Stukas on the nightmarish Russian front. Veteran leader The Sarge and his section face hell in the brutal Italian campaign. Wheeler-dealer Crazy Keller drives for his life as World War Two comes to its bloody conclusion. Lethal British agent Dredger doles out justice- of a kind- on the streets of 1980s London. All these and more in this high-octane collection of fantastic new combat strips, featuring scripts by Ennis and art by some of the biggest names in modern comics, including Kevin O'Neill (Nemesis The Warlock, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), Chris Burnham (Batman) and John Higgins (Watchmen, Dreadnoughts). Get your front-row seats to the front line, as only the legendary Battle Action can deliver!

At last, the original two League of Extraordinary Gentlemen epics are collected in a single volume! In this amazingly imaginative tale, Allan Quatermain, Mina Murray, Captain Nemo, Dr. Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde, and Hawley Griffin, the Invisible Man, unite to defeat a deadly menace to London and all Britons! Then, one month later, the skies over England are filled with flaming rockets as Mars launches the first salvo of an invasion. Only our stalwart adventurers can save mother England and the Earth itself!

Most intervention research in education aims to demonstrate the efficacy of specific programs and practices. The assumption is that if researchers can produce evidence-based programs that work in a variety of settings, educators will take them up on a large scale. Unfortunately, this approach largely neglects the role that out-of-school experiences can and do play in learning, and assumes that contexts are peripheral to intervention success. However, we know from decades of research that contexts profoundly shape the nature and effects of interventions. Further, researchers may produce interventions that are not usable or sustainable when they do so without incorporating the voices of educators, community members, and families. Design-based research offers a more collaborative approach to organizing for equitable educational change. This approach to developing and testing innovations in classrooms (and other settings) intertwines design and research closely. The essays in this volume draw on inspiration from the work of L.S. Vygotsky and his colleagues, highlighting ways that design research can foreground cultural, historical, and institutional processes as central constituents of learning. Each essay considers concrete ways that institutional contexts shape interventions; how design can support the agency of local participants in developing new learning arrangements and resources; and how communities can organize both with and without researcher-interventionists to address historical inequities linked to race, language, and poverty. As an ensemble, these essays offer productive new approaches for expanding design research methodologies to encompass both issues and contexts that have often been absent in most learning sciences research. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of the Learning Sciences.

First book of essays devoted to Coetzee's controversial novel, combining critical and pedagogical approaches. Ever since it was first published in 1999, Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace has provoked controversy. Set in post-apartheid South Africa, it follows Prof. David Lurie as he encounters disgrace through his sexual exploitation of a student and then through the shocking gang-rape of his only daughter. The novel's uncompromising portrayal of the "new" South Africa outraged many, who found the book regressive, even racist. It also challengedreaders worldwide to confront its hard questions. This first book of essays devoted to the novel ambitiously brings together criticism and pedagogy. The ten critical essays and eight essays on teaching Disgrace grapple with the ethical issues the novel so provocatively raises: rape, gender, race, animal rights. Disgrace is widely taught in colleges and universities and read in book clubs; the debates it has given rise to will take on fresh life with the release of the upcoming film starring John Malkovich. Unusually, the eighteen contributors to the collection are all faculty members or graduates of the same institution, the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies atthe University of Redlands, and have worked together closely in crafting their essays over the past two years. The volume will be exceptionally useful to teachers of literature, philosophy, and South African culture, to book clubleaders, and to all readers of Coetzee. Contributors: Nancy Best, James Boobar, Bradley Butterfield, Jane Creighton, Matthew Gray, Pat Harrigan, Gary Hawkins, Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann, Daniel Kiefer, Bill McDonald, Michael G. McDunnah, Kim Middleton, Kevin O'Neill, Raymond Obstfeld, Kathy Ogren, Kenneth Reinhard, Sandra D. Shattuck, Patricia Casey Sutcliffe, Julie Townsend. Bill McDonald is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Redlands, Redlands, California.

*The bestselling League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series continues in this standalone graphic novel! It's 1925, fifteen long years since Janni Dakkar first tried to escape the legacy of her dying science-pirate father, only to accept her destiny as the new Nemo, captain of the legendary Nautilus. Now, tired of her unending spree of plunder and destruction, Janni launches a grand expedition to surpass her father's greatest failure: the exploration of Antarctica. Hot on her frozen trail are a trio of genius inventors, hired by an influential publishing tycoon to retrieve the plundered valuables of an African queen. It's a deadly race to the bottom of the world -- an uncharted land of wonder and horror where time is broken and the mountains bring madness. Jules Verne meets H.P. Lovecraft in the unforgettable final showdown, lost in the living, beating and appallingly inhuman HEART OF ICE.

Your Fate is in Your Hands! Originally published during the adventure gamebook boom of the 1980s, Dice Man has never been reprinted in its entirety before, but now the complete run of comic/game magazine is presented in this massive collection. Using dice and a pencil, you will become Judge Dredd as he faces off against the Dark Judges, or guide Nemesis the Warlock as they race through the Torture Tube, or help Sláine steal the Cauldron of Blood from the Tower of Glass. With the stories and games created by Pat Mills and Simon Geller, and art from some of 2000 AD’s finest artists such as Kevin O’Neill (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), Steve Dillon (Preacher), and Bryan Talbot (The Adventures of Luther Arkwright), this is an unmissable collection for any 2000 AD reader.

Welcome to the story to end all stories. Two decades of literary League lunacy have all been building to this, the most ambitious meta-comic imaginable. After an epic twenty-year journey through the entirety of human culture - the biggest cross-continuity 'universe' that is conceivable - Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill conclude both their legendary League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and their equally legendary comic-book careers with the series' spectacular fourth and final volume, The Tempest. Tying up the slenderest of plot threads and allusions from the three preceding volumes, The Black Dossier, and the Nemo trilogy into a dazzling and ingenious bow, the world's most accomplished and bad-tempered artist-writer team use their most stylistically adventurous outing yet to display the glories of the medium they are leaving; to demonstrate the excitement that attracted them to the field in the first place; and to analyse, critically and entertainingly, the reasons for their departure. Opening simultaneously in the panic-stricken headquarters of British Military Intelligence, the fabled Ayesha's lost African city of Kor and the domed citadel of 'We' on the devastated Earth of the year 2,996, the dense and yet furiously-paced narrative hurtles like an express locomotive across the fictional globe from Lincoln Island to modern America to the Blazing World; from the Jacobean antiquity of Prospero's Men to the superhero-inundated pastures of the present to the unimaginable reaches of a shimmering science-fiction future. With a cast-list that includes many of the most iconic figures from literature and pop culture, and a tempo that conveys the terrible momentum of inevitable events, this is literally and literarily the story to end all stories. Originally published as a six-issue run of unfashionable, outmoded and flimsy children's comics that would make you appear emotionally backward if you read them on the bus, this climactic magnum opus also reprints classic English super-team publication The Seven Stars from the murky black-and-white reaches of 1964. A magnificent celebration of everything comics were, are and could be, any appreciator or student of the medium would be unwise to miss The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume IV: THE TEMPEST. Co-Published by Top Shelf Productions (US) and Knockabout (UK).

Tomas de Torquemada has escaped back in time and finds himself in 1980s Britain. Here, amidst the rising unemployment and Thatcher-era angst Nemesis' sworn enemy spreads his own special breed of hatred. But the warlock is not far behind him and the scene is set for the last, definitive battle! Written by Pat Mills (Slaine) with art by David Roach (Star Wars: Tales of The Jedi), John Hicklenton (Zombie World) and Henry Flint (Judge Dredd) amongst others this third volume in the Nemesis series brings the saga to an explosive conclusion!