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The Straw Men
''The Straw Men'' is a 2002 crime novel by British writer Michael Marshall. It is the first part of a trilogy. Marshall has previously published some science fiction titles under the name Michael Marshall Smith, but following in the footsteps of Iain Banks and Brian Aldiss, Marshall has decided to swap names to denote a switch in genre. Plot ''The Straw Men'' is a book about serial killers. It opens with a scene set in a small American town, where a duo of gunmen open fire in a busy McDonald's fast food franchise. The remainder of the book jumps between two storylines. The first is a first person narrative piece telling us about Ward Hopkins, a young man going home to bury his parents after they suffered a car accident. He encounters a video tape in the family home that suggests that maybe they are still alive. Investigations are pursued with and things quickly spiral as they typically tend to do. A friend who happens to be a CIA operative is enlisted to provide someone to c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crime Novel
Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, crime novel, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives or fiction that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, often a murder. Most crime drama focuses on criminal investigation and does not feature the courtroom. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as historical fiction and science fiction, but the boundaries are indistinct. Crime fiction has several subgenres, including detective fiction (such as the whodunit), courtroom drama, hard-boiled fiction, and legal thrillers. History Proto-science and crime fictions have been composed across history, and in this category can be placed texts as varied as the Epic of Gilgamesh from Mesopotamia, the Mahabharata from ancient India, the Book of Tobit, U ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Marshall Smith
Michael Paul Marshall Smith (born 3 May 1965) is an English novelist, screenwriter and short story writer who also writes as Michael Marshall, M. M. Smith and Michael Rutger. Biography Born in Knutsford, Cheshire, Smith moved with his family at an early age to first Illinois and then Florida. When he was seven, the family moved again, this time to South Africa, and then to Australia before eventually returning home to England in 1973. He was educated in Chigwell and at King's College, Cambridge, where he studied Philosophy, Social and Political Science, and became involved with the Cambridge Footlights. Under the pseudonym of Michael Rutger, he became a comedy writer and performer on the BBC Radio 4 series '' And Now in Colour'', which ran for two series. Between 2002 and 2004, he also co-wrote material for two series of surreal comedy '' Dare to Believe''. Writing career Smith's first published story was "The Man Who Drew Cats", which won the British Fantasy Award in 1991 for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science Fiction
Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space exploration, time travel, Parallel universes in fiction, parallel universes, and extraterrestrials in fiction, extraterrestrial life. The genre often explores human responses to the consequences of projected or imagined scientific advances. Science fiction is related to fantasy (together abbreviated wikt:SF&F, SF&F), Horror fiction, horror, and superhero fiction, and it contains many #Subgenres, subgenres. The genre's precise Definitions of science fiction, definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers. Major subgenres include hard science fiction, ''hard'' science fiction, which emphasizes scientific accuracy, and soft science fiction, ''soft'' science fiction, which focuses on social sciences. Other no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iain Banks
Iain Banks (16 February 1954 – 9 June 2013) was a Scottish author, writing mainstream fiction as Iain Banks and science fiction as Iain M. Banks, adding the initial of his adopted middle name Menzies (). After the success of '' The Wasp Factory'' (1984), he began to write full time. His first science fiction book, '' Consider Phlebas'', appeared in 1987, marking the start of the ''Culture'' series. His books have been adapted for theatre, radio, and television. In 2008, ''The Times'' named Banks in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". In April 2013, Banks announced he had inoperable cancer and was unlikely to live beyond a year. He died on 9 June 2013. Early life Banks was born in Dunfermline, Fife, to a mother who was a professional ice skater and a father who was an officer in the Admiralty. An only child, he lived in North Queensferry until the age of nine, near the naval dockyards in Rosyth, where his father was based. The family then moved to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brian Aldiss
Brian Wilson Aldiss (; 18 August 1925 – 19 August 2017) was an English writer, artist and anthology editor, best known for science fiction novels and short stories. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss, except for occasional pseudonyms during the mid-1960s. Greatly influenced by science fiction pioneer H. G. Wells, Aldiss was a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society. He was co-president of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group with Harry Harrison (writer), Harry Harrison. Aldiss was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, Science Fiction Writers of America in 1999 and inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2004. He received two Hugo Awards, one Nebula Award and one John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He wrote the short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" (1969), the basis for the Stanley Kubrick-developed Steven Spielberg film ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genre
Genre () is any style or form of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, based on some set of stylistic criteria, as in literary genres, film genres, music genres, comics genres, etc. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand-alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, but genres are amalgams of these texts based on agreed-upon or socially inferred conventions. Some genres may have rigid, strictly adhered-to guidelines, while others may show great flexibility. The proper use of a specific genre is important for a successful transfer of information ( media-adequacy). Critical discussion of genre perhaps began with a classification system for ancient Greek literature, as set out in Aristotle' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
McDonald's
McDonald's Corporation, doing business as McDonald's, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational fast food chain store, chain. As of 2024, it is the second largest by number of locations in the world, behind only the Chinese chain Mixue Ice Cream & Tea. Brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald founded McDonald's in San Bernardino, California, in 1940 as a hamburger stand, and soon Franchising, franchised the company. The logo, the Golden Arches, was introduced in 1953. In 1955, the businessman Ray Kroc joined McDonald's as a franchise agent and bought the company in 1961. In the years since, it has expanded internationally. Today, McDonald's has over 50,000 restaurant locations worldwide, with around a quarter in the US. Other than food sales, McDonald's generates income through its ownership of 70% of restaurant buildings and 45% of the underlying land (which it leases to its franchisees). In 2018, McDonald's was the world's second-largest private employer with 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zenescope Entertainment
Zenescope Entertainment is a comic book and graphic novel publisher headquartered in Horsham, Pennsylvania, United States, cofounded by Joe Brusha and Ralph Tedesco in 2005. Zenescope publishes full-color action, fantasy and horror titles. Under the Silver Dragon imprint, Zenescope publishes all-ages and educational titles, partnering with companies like Discovery Channel and History Channel to develop content. History Originally teamed up to write and develop screenplays, Joe Brusha and Ralph Tedesco realized that comic books and graphic novels followed the same process. An avid comic book reader, Brusha believed that comic books and graphic novels would become part of mainstream America, and wanted to help that process. They began writing and assembling the creative team for their flagship title ''Grimm Fairy Tales'' and published the first issue in June 2005. In 2006, Brusha and Tedesco partnered with writer Raven Gregory (known for his series ''The Gift'') to begin work on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Newsarama
''Newsarama'' is an American website that publishes news, interviews, and essays about the American comic book industry. It is owned by Future US. In June 2020, Newsarama was merged with the website ''GamesRadar+'', also owned by Future US. History Message board column ''Newsarama'' began in mid-1995 as a series of Internet forum postings on the Prodigy (ISP), Prodigy comic book message boards by fan Mike Doran. In the forum postings, Doran shared comic book-related news items he had found across the World Wide Web and, as these postings became more regular and read widely, he gave them the title "Prodigy Comic Book Newswire." In January 1997, Doran began to post a version of the column titled ''The Comics Newswire'' on Usenet's various rec.arts.comics communities. The name of the column evolved to ''The Newswire'', and then to ''CBI Newsarama'', before finally becoming ''Newsarama'' in 1998, with the help of co-creator Matt Brady. That year, Doran broke the news of Jim Lee's s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels By Michael Marshall Smith
A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning 'new'. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval Chivalric romance, and the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel. Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, and John Cowper Powys, preferred the term ''romance''. Such romances should not be confused with the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
