These stories are linked by humor, setting, themes and recurring characters — cat lovers, murderers, gamblers, ghosts and fools — but mostly by the movie stars, gods and goddesses who look down on us struggling mortals with a mixture of benevolence and wrath. From Scarlett Johansson to Joan Crawford, Clint Eastwood to Jerry Lewis, they represent the impossible ideals to which lesser beings turn for hope in an otherwise baffling world

Movieola is a collection of linked short stories that delights and exploits the language and paraphernalia of industrial Hollywood. The collection delves into a night at the movies, featuring all the familiar types — the rom-com, the action-adventure, the superhero and the spy — but the narratives are still under construction, and every story line is an opportunity for the unimaginable twist. Motive and identity are constantly shifting in these short stories that offer both narrative and anti-narrative, while the stunted shoptalk of the movie business struggles to keep up. With the wit of Steve Erickson’s Zeroville and the inventive spirit of Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics, John Domini offers a collection at once comical and moving, carefully suspended between a game of language and a celebration of American film

A brilliant physicist and the daughter of one of Mars’ oldest colonizing families — both involved in the student uprising of 2171 — see the revolution take a dramatic, unexpected turn. Won Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1994. Nominated for Hugo, Locus, and John F. Campbell Memorial Awards in 1994

A feckless, comical narrator struggles against all odds to tell a story for which he is responsible, but which he neither controls nor understands. His characters multiply, repeat, and go astray; his employer pays no attention, asleep in a drunken stupor. The increasingly desperate narrator clambers over rooftops and through underground passages, watching helplessly as his characters reappear in different times and settings and start rival stories against his will. This brilliant, wryly humorous work tells of the sadness of the world and of the inadequate means that language and storytelling offer for describing and understanding it. Yet it does so in Tulli's characteristically clear, concrete, gorgeous prose. This extraordinary work, unique in both form and message, shows a European master at the height of her powers and constitutes a major contribution to a new century of European literature. A wildly inventive page-turner

Cameras roll - which means the imps inside have to paint really fast - in the fantastic Discworld when the alchemists discover the magic of the silver screen. But what is the dark secret of Holy Wood hill? As the alien clich's of Tinsel Town pour into the world, it's up to the Disc's first film stars to find out... THRILL as Victor Tugelbend ("Can't sing. Can't dance. Can handle a sword a little") and Theda Withel ("I come from a little town you've probably never even heard of") battle the forces of evil and cinema advertising... SCREAM as Gaspode the Wonder Dog nearly saves the day... EAT POPCORN as you watch the filming of "Blown Away", the oddest Civil War picture ever made... A Passionate Saga Set Against the Background of a World Gone Mad! This Will Amaze You! With a Thousand Elephants! ("And afterwards, why not dine at Harga's House of Ribs, for the best in international cuisine; only two minutes from this book...")