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The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction
Patricia S. Warrick
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Androids, Humanoids and Other Science Fiction Monsters: Science and Soul in Science Fiction
ASIN: 0262730618 |
Customer Reviews:
Good Book.......2007-03-18
This is a pretty good basic book with some great examples. I gave it only 4 stars because there are some other great books out there on Landscape Photography which I liked better than this one. John Shaw is a good author to explain the basics and sometimes you see him repeat what you read in the earlier chapters, for me I like it because it kind'a reminds you and you can remember it. This is important for the final shoot out day. ** Close-Ups in Nature ** is another great book from John Shaw and I love the theory and examples in this book.
GREAT INFLUENCE.......2006-03-05
This book influenced my outlook for the wide angle lenses, the use of Velvia, and polorizing filters. I now use all three liberally. Thanks John Shaw
Great book.......2005-10-25
This is very nice book with wonderful pictures and very practical advices.
I will recommend it to all semi-prof photographers and amateurs as well.
My favorite book.......2005-03-26
I've read about ten photography books and this one is my favorite. The text is simple, yet essential. The photographs are truly great.
I guess if someone has read "Nature Photography Field Guide" will find many things at least familiar. The photos, although great to my eye, might be found as too conventional. But thats OK with me.
I think John Shaw is the best "tutor" I could find. His books have helped me a lot to improve my photography.
Great Book Simple To Understand........2004-11-06
I'm not gonna go deep into the contents of the book because others have done that. All I'm gonna tell you is that if your looking to understand photography in anyway this book is for you. John Shaw spells everything out to you in a very simple way that is easy to understand. If your not sure the first time just re-read the section again and it will come to you.
Book Description
In the new edition of this practical guide, master photographer Ellen Anon and digital-imaging expert Tim Grey show you how to capture the beauty of nature by shooting the best possible photos from the start—and then getting the most out of your images at your desktop. You’ll find eye-opening techniques, workflow ideas, and terrific Photoshop tools, plus a host of valuable tips and stunning examples from some of the most esteemed professional nature photographers working today.
Customer Reviews:
Nature Photographers Photoshop CS3 - A Very Good Book.......2007-09-23
PRO: I generally agree with the previous favorable reviews of the book and therefore, rate the book with four stars - not perfect but covering most of the important subjects for nature photography. I'm glad I purchased the book. The TRY IT work lessens in each chapter are helpful because you learn by practice, but it may take a little time to locate where your told to go if your not already familiar with photoshop. This is my first and only book on photoshop and I don't believe I will need another book on this subject for a long time.
CON:The books author makes some assumptions about the readers photoshop knowledge that may not always be correct. This is unavoidable. As mentioned earlier in one of the responses, the book binding is not very strong, so if you scan pages try not to lay the opposite page flat on the scanner, the pages will come loose from the string binding.
I am an italian amateur.......2007-08-30
I have added this very nice book to my already rich collection of Photoshop books because I was mainly attracted
by the concept of Nature that was missing in my arsenal, and because I wished learning more about the new
features of Photoshop CS3 ( that I've recently bought), such as Adobe Camera Raw, Smart Objects, Quick Selection Tool,
and the new Panorama tool.
Under its very appealing graphic appearance I found all the responses I've expected, every topic being
exposed in a natural and direct way.
I also found very useful the tutorials and the examples on the accompanying CD, as well
as the contents of the Authors' Web Sites.
I recommend this book to everybody willing go deeper into the art if photographic imaging, to the experts as well as the novices
on Photoshop CS3.
Mario Console
Essential Book for Serious Nature Photographers.......2007-07-27
Whether you are new to nature shooting or experienced, Ellen Anon and Tim Grey's book is sure to provide techniques, insights, and tips that you can put to use immediately and with excellent results. The authors take time to thoroughly explain complex concepts and techniques in easy-to-understand language and with excellent background that deepens your understanding of both the art and the science.
One of the primary advantages of this book is that it takes you step-by-step from exposing images in the field, through exposure and color adjustments in the digital darkroom, and finally to getting the best output on the printer. And as a bonus, this book includes great techniques for creative effects and for saving time during the workflow.
This is a must-have book for serious nature photographers--and for anyone who wants a complete guide to shooting, processing, and printing great digital images.
Charlotte Lowrie,
Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi/400D Digital Field Guide,
Canon EOS 30D Digital Field Guide, & Canon Eos Digital Rebel Digital Field Guide
Tremendous Book! Essential information!.......2007-07-19
For any serious amateur to pro level photographer, this is a "no-brainer" book to own.
Ellen and Tim do a great job breaking down the software barriers to make our digital work easier
to conceive and to perform.
There is a wealth of information here.
After years of trying (unsuccessfully) to get through software manuals and books, this is the first book that we actually keep on our coffee table and take with us on the road. Even a perfunctory paging through will yield invaluable information in a concise, lucid prose.
Highly recommended!
A must have book........2007-07-14
This book is for the advanced hobbyist photographer. It shows great technics and work flows. If you are serious about your photography, you will learn a great deal from this great book.
Customer Reviews:
Kabuki Is More Than A Comic.......2007-04-01
This is my favorite comic. This was my intro to Kabuki. I was in the mood for something different, saw an ad for this on the back of one comic or another and checked it out at the local direct sales store. WOW. Yes its weirdly told compared to the ordinary comic book and having to move the pages around to read all of it was odd but I loved it. I thought Frank Miller hit the high point in comics when he did The Dark Night back in the 80's. This just blew that away.
You probably have to be an adult to get all the nuances but even then there are layers within layers here.
The best graphic novel is Skin Deep!.......2004-07-04
David Mack's beautiful art combined with his wonderful storytelling made this Amazing book come to life. This book deals with Kabuki, a "defective" agent of a secret assassination team called the "Noh" (a group of mysterious women who wear masks who protect the innocent from unknown dangers) being in Control Corps mental institute. She is locked up in a room which is to her, constantly changing color and morphing, due to hallucination from drugged foods, only allowed to come out for meetings with doctors, and refuses to speak without her "face" (which is really her kabuki mask, but she feels the mask gives her strength and confidence, and in some psychotic way, actually believes the mask is her face).
This book is much more than your average comic book will ever be. The art is amazing (compared to most of today's comic books), the story is captivating, and I guarantee your eyes will be glued to every page! This fully painted, amazingly written book deserves 1,000 stars and an A++++. It's mysterious, beautiful, strange, confusing, and twisted, but you will definitely enjoy this book if you are looking for a new genre of comic book. You will never read a graphic novel quite like this one. If you are a fan of the timeless graphic novel "Elektra: Assassin", than this book, Kabuki: skin deep, is definitely for you!
Perhaps the most interestingly mysterious part of this book is a person Kabuki receives messages from, through a vent in the ceiling of her room on small pieces of origami paper, named Akemi. Akemi sends kabuki these origami animals, telling her not to fall for any of the guards' tricks. "She" (or whoever this "person" may be) tells Kabuki not to eat or sleep in order to save herself. But Kabuki begins to wonder why Akemi is giving her such helpful advice. Is Akemi a true friend? Is Akemi a character made up by one of the doctors trying to get Kabuki to cooperate? Is Akemi one of the Noh operatives coming to break Kabuki out of her cell? Or, is Akemi just an imaginary friend fabricated by Kabuki's own mind to help her cope with the hardships of being in a mental institute.
Find out when you read Skin Deep, the best, most entertaining graphic novel I have ever read. This book deserves the highest rating of any graphic novel. It is truly amazing. I have never read a book like this. I read (not just the words in the bubbles but the childish, autobiographical words and doodles of "kabuki" scribbled across the page and in the corners of) every page of this book.
~SPOILER~
*Look for the page where there is a statue marked "foam rubber statue, as not to hurt myself or others" to get an idea of what I am talking about*. It's as if "Kabuki" is making commentary on the world around her and we get to see every strangely child-like bit of it!
If you liked Elektra: assassin, Evil Ernie: Youth gone wild, or
Hellboy: the chained coffin and others, then you will love this book. If you are already interested in Kabuki, I recommend the slightly less entertaining comic book, Billy Tucci's "Shi" (visit www.crusadefinearts.com for information on Shi.) I hope this review has helped you, and I hope you will read Kabuki: Skin deep.
One that you'll remember.......2003-11-19
I look for two things in a comic. The first is strong visuals - good drawing, deep imagery, skill with materials, composition, and lots more.
The second is optional if #1 is good enough: story. David Mack gives everything. The story is good, in a Femme Nikita Japonaise Noveau kind of way. The art is all I look for. It is dense - many marks carry different parts of the narrative. It is skilled - watercolor, pen, photo, I lost track of the amount of process that goes into each page. Text, imagery, and typography interact without clear bounds. There's just so much that I can't remember it all, so I have to it over and over. (That's a good thing.)
Not for kids, but not everything has to be. Not 'adult' either. Just really good. At least, I think so.
One small warning: not all of Mack's Kabuki books sustain this level of visual intensity. If that is your reason for buying a book, this one's good. Only some of Mack's Kabuki books conduct this much power. Well, he's only human.
Poetry, Psychology, and Perfection!.......2001-01-24
In the previous two books in the Kabuki series David Mack has been exploring the effect on the lifes of those around Kabuki of the events in Volume 1. Here in Volume 4; Skin Deep we finally return to the heroine of the title. This book, while ostensibly a superhero comic book is in fact an excellent combination of so many things. This book brings together great storytelling, excellent characterisation, beautiful artwork, poetry and psychology. We learn more about the fate of the great character Mack has created in Kabuki. While not as long, or indeed as involving as the first work, this book has a very different feel to it. In this work we get drawn into the psychology of the women involved, and into the raw emotions they experience. There is no middle ground in this book. I strongly recommend this book BUT you do have to read the previous works in the series. This is not a good starting point. But you should make the effort. Go back to the start. Work your way here. It is worth it.
Customer Reviews:
Continuation of the saga..........2002-02-01
This series advances the story of Kabuki started in Circle of Blood through the eyes of the other Noh agents. In a truly fascinating style, each agent is drawn by a different artist. This medium allows, in my opinion, each character to have a separate identity and personality--more so than one artist could have accomplished. Compelling storytelling and wonderful art at its best.
Amazon.com
"Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood." The quote is from Frank McCourt's memoir of growing up impoverished in Limerick, circa World War II. But the sentiment might just as easily have come from the fictional lips of Henry Smart, the hero of Roddy Doyle's remarkable novel of Dublin in the teens, A Star Called Henry. The son of a one-legged hit man, young Henry is the third child born but the first to live through infancy. He is also the second Henry--the first having died, and become a star in the mind of his mother.
She held me but she looked up at her twinkling boy. Poor me beside her, pale and red-eyed, held together by rashes and sores. A stomach crying to be filled, bare feet aching like an old, old man's. Me, a shocking substitute for the little Henry who'd been too good for this world, the Henry God had wanted for himself. Poor me.
Soon, his father has all but abandoned the growing family, and at 9 Henry is on his own, running wild in the streets, thieving to stay alive. Depressing as all this sounds, Doyle has invested his narrator with such an appetite for life, and rendered him so resolutely unsorry for himself, that it seems almost insulting to pity him.
By the time he is 14, Henry has become a soldier in the new Irish Republican Army and in one long and harrowing chapter, we view the events of the Easter Rising of 1916 from his position in the thick of it. It's not a pretty sight by any means, as the populace is divided in its support and various factions within the Republican Army threaten to splinter and annihilate one another before the British even get there. When the shooting starts, Henry aims not at the British but at the store windows across the street. "I shot and killed all that I had been denied, all the commerce and snobbery that had been mocking me and other hundreds of thousands behind glass and locks, all the injustice, unfairness and shoes--while the lads took chunks out of the military." Though the uprising is eventually crushed and the leaders executed, Henry escapes to live--and fight--another day.
In previous books such as The Barrytown Trilogy, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, and The Woman Who Walked into Doors, Doyle has established himself as one of the premiere chroniclers of modern Irish life. With A Star Called Henry, he works his singular magic on the past. What's more, this is only volume one of the Last Roundup, so it looks like we haven't seen the last of Henry Smart. And that's a very good thing, indeed. --Alix Wilber
Book Description
An historical novel like none before it, A Star Called Henry marks a new chapter in Booker Prize-winner Roddy Doyle's writing. It is a vastly more ambitious book than any he has previously written. A subversive look behind the legends of Irish republicanism, at its centre a passionate love story, this new novel is a triumphant work of fiction.
Born in the slums of Dublin in 1902, his father a one-legged whorehouse bouncer and settler of scores, Henry Smart has to grow up fast. By the time he can walk he's out robbing, begging, charming, often cold, always hungry, but a prince of the streets. At fourteen, already six foot two, Henry's in the General Post Office on Easter Monday 1916, a soldier in the Irish Citizen Army, fighting for freedom. A year later he's ready to die for Ireland again, a rebel, a Fenian, and, soon, a killer. With his father's wooden leg as his weapon, Henry becomes a republican legend - one of Michael Collins' boys, a cop killer, an assassin on a stolen bike, a lover.
Customer Reviews:
A (Revolutionary) Star is Born.......2007-09-24
A wonderful journey into Ireland around the time of WWI and after: the author can make you taste, smell, hear, and, of course, see the place. I knew nothing about the nitty gritty of Ireland's problems politically, but now I have a great bird's eye view of the whole conflict. All of this while at the same time we see a real have-nothing Irish kid growing up to learn to hate the "enemy." As the book progresses, he finally comes to see himself as a dispensable tool of whoever he is working for...a truly sad awakening that puts the lie to those Revolutionary ideals. This story is so true to life that it shows us something of what Peggy Noonan wrote about in the Wall St. Journal yesterday: "They would grow up and assign their misery to outside forces. The boy humiliated because he's never sent to school with a clean shirt will turn that into 'Britain Get Out of Ireland.'....We often think it is large and abstract forces that drive history, when it is personal forces, too." The life of Henry Smart is a masterly illustration of this.
A Must For Researchers.......2007-05-18
As Continental forces and Virginia militia units were engaged in winning independence, American quartermasters and provisioners struggled to provide these units with all the necessities of life, from meals and guns to meat, fodder for horses, the horses themselves, firewood, and every other type of material. Much of this was requisitioned from the civilian population and certificates were issued payable in either continental or state funds, depending on the units supplied, upon presentation to court authorities. Thousands of these certificates issued to Virginians were duly entered by the courts, and they provide a fascinating insight into the period of the Revolution. These "Publick" Claims booklets contain interesting and useful information about the contributions of ordinary people to the Revolutionary War. They provide some details of people's service in the militia or as guards for prisoners of war; they indicate where some bodies of troops were at particular times; and they identify providers of horses, wagons, cattle, grain, or other supplies. Much of the information in these booklets cannot be found anywhere else, which makes the surviving records particularly valuable. Also remarkable is the fact that records survived from virtually every county in the state at that time with the exception of the newly formed Kentucky counties. This makes the collection even more valuable in covering areas which heretofore in this time period have suffered from a lack of personal data. The "Virginia Publick Claims" are published by counties. In addition to a faithful transcription by Janice Luck Abercrombie and the late Richard Slatten, a complete index is provided for each county booklet. This series is an extremely important genealogical tool for searchers in Revolutionary-era materials.
SO THAT'S WHY THEY FIGHT?.......2006-02-23
Henry Smart is a sorrowful figure. A robber, a beggar a doorman and destined to be caught up in the "struggle" as so many working class Irishmen and women are. Where else do they turn? Why do the English provoke them so? Answer these questions and you will answer the age old "Irish Problem" and end the hostilities once and for all.
Roddy Doyle takes us through the slums of early 1900's Dublin and asks the question Why? time and time again. At times the book makes me ashamed to be British and then I pinch myself and remember it's fiction. Or is it? It's the mark of a good fiction writer to make you think.
Roddy Doyle is the best Irish fiction writer alive today. Read him and weep!
Fast Paced, Readable.......2005-10-22
A STAR CALLED HENRY is the first novel I've read by Roddy Doyle, whom I'd never heard of, until I got this book as a gift. Doyle's style is crackling and attention-grabbing. It's certainly an easy book to get into, especially in the first part of the book, where we experience Henry's sorid childhood on the streets of Dublin. In many respects, the beginning is the most solid part of the novel; this is where nearly all of the characterization is done and Henry's humanity is front and center as he mourns for his mother, father, brother, and the life that he never had.
As the novel progresses, we witness Henry's involvment in the movement for a free Ireland. These passages are exciting, but not as moving as the earlier chapters. Some of the blame for this must be laid on my shoulders, as I know virtually nothing of Ireland's struggle for independence. Maybe someone more familiar with the history will be more easily drawn into the descriptions of guerilla warfare. Still, even as an ignorant American, I found myself wrapped up in the story. My only complaint is that Henry ceases to change much as a character after he reaches the age of 14. The idealism and violence of the period of "troubles" does little to alter his outlook, and he seems to possess an uncanny confidence that does not lend itself to much reflection. Henry is unrepentently selfish (not a criticism) and never seems to have a moment when he questions his actions. On the other hand, the novel's statement about the way revolutions shift power to the revolutionaries, and not to the people, is presented in a profound way.
A STAR CALLED HENRY is not a life-changing novel by any stretch of the imagination, but is certainly a cut above most fiction, and easily recommendable.
Excellent.......2005-09-18
A star called Henry was one of the best books i have read in the last few years. If you like Irish history you will love this book. Another excellent book i recommend is Tread Softly on My Dreams: The Robert Emmet Story, Gretta Curran Browne. You will surely love this book if you liked A star called Henry.
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A Star Called Henry
Roddy Doyle
Manufacturer: Viking Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
| Literature & Fiction
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Irish
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ASIN: 0224049372 |
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A Star Called Henry
Roddy Doyle
Manufacturer: Viking
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: B000HL7S0W |
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Star Called Henry
Roddy Doyle
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Irish
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ASIN: B000OJAV56 |
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A STAR CALLED HENRY.
Manufacturer: QPD
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000HLJUAS |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by University of Oklahoma on June 22, 2000. The length of the article is 967 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: A Star Called Henry.(Review)
Author: William Hutchings
Publication:
World Literature Today (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 2000
Publisher: University of Oklahoma
Volume: 74
Issue: 3
Page: 594
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Product Description
Volume One of The Last Roundup
Customer Reviews:
WHAT A GEM!.......2007-05-23
A STAR CALLED HENRY is the story of Henry Smart - who, born in Dublin in the beginning of the twentieth century, is precocious, handsome, and recklessly adventurous. But more than any of that, he's a survivor. And survive he does, from the bowels of poverty-stricken Ireland (think "Angela's Ashes") through his role as a soldier in the Irish Rebellion. A STAR CALLED HENRY is the story of Henry's tangles and clashes, and it's replete with Irish history I'll admit I knew little about until I read this book.
Though I found the book confusing at times, I never once had the urge to put it down. It's a glorious read, written in a voice that is both funny and poignant.
I highly recommend this book.
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