Legends

Cyberpunk and Beyond... The literature of science fiction is, to employ the customary buzz word, the literature of "extrapolation," but science-fiction writers vary enormously in their ability to "extrapolate," to envision a futuristic milieu of ceaseless change in which the metamorphosis of humanity becomes an inevitable concomitant. This relative rarity of genuine visionary inspiration makes all the more remarkable the appearance in 1982 of Bruce Sterling's "Swarm," the first of five stories set within the author's richly imagined Shaper/Mechanist universe. In this series the entire solar system has become the setting for unremitting conflict between the genetically altered Shapers and the cybernetically augmented Mechanists, with the factional struggles, space-age technologies, even a dialectical metaphysics, all brilliantly developed by Sterling. "Technology has unleashed tremendous forces that are ripping society apart," explains a character in "Swarm"; through the Shaper/Mechanist sequence one witnesses the evolution of mankind from human to posthuman to god. The remaining stories in Crystal Express display the dazzling range of Bruce Sterling's talents: in the near-future "Green Days in Brunei," the moribund nation-state has been superseded by a global communications network controlled by multinational corporations, while "The Beautiful and the Sublime" is the author's smiles-of-a-summer-night divertissement, told with inimitable wit and panache. In "Flowers of Edo" an ex-samurai must do battle with the demons of progress, while "Dinner in Audoghast" presents a chilling prophecy out of medieval Africa. From hard-core cyberpunk technologies to global Greenpeace polemics to haunting historical fantasies, Bruce Sterling has emerged as both a serious and insightful futurist and a towering figure in American imaginative fiction.

"There really was a Hollywood, a place of fashionable men and gorgeous women and the all-powerful studio system that allowed them to defy the conventions that governed the rest of the country. Clark Gable arrived there after a rough-and-tumble youth, and his breezy, big- boned, everyman persona quickly made him the town's "King." He was a gambler among gamblers, a heavy drinker in the days when everyone drank seemingly all the time, and a lover to legions of the most attractive women in the most glamorous business in the world.". "In this biography, Warren G. Harris gives us a portrait of one of the most memorable actors in the history of motion pictures, as well as a sure sense of the milieu and the times of mid-century Hollywood. More than anything else, one is struck by the romance of the era - the glamour and the excess, the playfulness and the lust. The people who were Gable's intimates are legends in their own right: Loretta Young, Marion Davies, David O. Selznick, Jean Harlow, Judy Garland, Lana Turner, Spencer Tracy, Grace Kelly, and the list goes on and on." "Clark Gable reveals newly uncovered information about Gables's illegitimate daughter, his relationship with Joan Crawford, and his great love for Carole Lombard, his third wife."--BOOK JACKET.

Portrait de la celebre actrice abondamment documente. L'auteur a eu des entretiens avec elle et avec ses proches, a eu acces a sa correspondance et a ses dossiers personnels et a rencontre bon nombre de personnes l'ayant cotoyee. Il retrace le parcours tumultueux de la vie et de la carriere de cette grande star hollywoodienne.