Satire Science

Trapped in a dead-end job in his Ohio hometown, watching the girl of his dreams move on to a glamorous new life in a big city - Donald McDougal's aimlessness has held him back for a long time. When a lightning strike grants him superhuman powers, he jumps at his chance to finally be somebody. But the new abilities and the pursuit of superheroic fame come with a price tag, and it may not be one he can afford.

What if you could make a change to history that would eliminate the Spanish Inquisition, American slavery, World War II, global warming, and an egomaniacal US president who thought he was smart enough to drop nuclear bombs here and there without negative consequences? What if that change also made the United States and five billion people poof from existence? Would you do it?

Set in the time of Charlemagne and narrated by a nun with her own secrets to keep, The Nonexistent Knight tells the story of Agilulf, a gleaming white suit of armor with nothing inside it. A challenge to his honor sends Agilulf on a search through France, England, and North Africa to confirm the chastity of a virgin he saved from rape years earlier.

How do you spot a robot mimicking a human? How do you recognize and deactivate a rebel servant robot? How do you escape a murderous "smart" house, or evade a swarm of marauding robotic flies? In this dryly hilarious survival guide, roboticist Daniel H. Wilson teaches worried humans the secrets to quashing a robot mutiny.

An ordinary, money-grubbing Merchant struggling to make a coin off penniless, incompetent adventurers is forced to take on the impossible quest of saving his town and rescuing the woman he loves from a treacherous and powerful Wizard. A battle of wit, wits and haggling that is part homage to, part skewer of the richly worked and often overwrought fantasy genre. An artful, satire of dungeon crawls and cRPG's, the Merchant Adventurer is part Princess Bride, part Dungeon Pawn Stars and a rollicking good read.

Fox 8 has always been known as the daydreamer in his pack, the one his fellow foxes regarded with a knowing snort and a roll of the eyes. That is, until Fox 8 develops a unique skill: He teaches himself to speak Yuman by hiding in the bushes outside a house and listening to children’s bedtime stories. The power of language fuels his abundant curiosity about people - even after danjer arrives in the form of a new shopping mall that cuts off his food supply, sending Fox 8 on a harrowing quest to help save his pack.

Introducing the Wixy Witches, this tale of many tales is an allegory like Alice or Oz, lampooning fairytales, the fantasy genre, and status brands. Set in the early fifteenth century, the orphaned Wixy quintuplets evade Florence’s witch hunters, as alchemist Bolinbard Hargmond flees plague with his wife and son Rebicus, heading for Draxenland, an island kingdom in the North Sea.

It’s two decades in the future, and a Christian college student named Ace Hartwick has just destroyed his neighbor’s so-called “wife”—actually a sexbot named Sally—in a trash compactor. Soon, Ace will be on trial for murder. Unfortunately for Ace, everyone despises his kind of “radical” Christianity, and, in the fragile America of the future, all the juries are fixed.

Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) may be considered the Canadian counterpart to Mark Twain. For many years he was professor of economics at Magill University and published a number of well-regarded texts on economics and political science. However, he is best known today for his many volumes of humorous fiction. During the 1920s he was one of the most widely read authors in the English-speaking world and was considered by Jack Benny and Groucho Marx to be one of the greatest comic writers of all time.

In Flatland, originally published in 1884, a humble square describes his two-dimensional world to benefit the inhabitants of Spaceland, the three-dimensional realm he discovers when he is visited by a being from beyond his plane. With dry wit and wild imagination, author Edwin Abbott Abbott builds a meticulous fantasy world rooted in an astute apprehension of psychology, politics, and social structures, as well as basic geometry. The story of Flatland, at once ridiculous and profound, delivers an incisive satire of social discourse that remains remarkably relevant today.

Erin is a plastic girl living in a plastic world. Every day she eats a breakfast of boiled chicken, then conveys her articulated body to Tablet Town, where she sells other figurines Smartbodies: wearable tech that allows full physical immersion in a virtual world, a refuge from real life’s brutal wars, oppressive governmental monitoring, and omnipresent eco-terrorist insurgency. If you cut her, she will not bleed—but she and her fellow figurines can still be cracked or blown apart by gunfire or bombs, or crumble away from nuclear fallout.

From short, fat, bald John Adams' wig-throwing tantrums during the 1800 election to Abraham Lincoln's decision to grow a beard in 1860; from John F. Kennedy's choice to forgo the fedora at his inauguration to John Kerry's decision to get Botoxed for the 2004 race; from the Golden Age of Facial Hair (1860-1912) to the Age of the Banker (1912-1960); from Washington's false teeth to George W. Bush's workout regimen, Project President tells the story of America's love affair with presidential looks and appearance.

They love nothing better than sipping free-trade gourmet coffee, leafing through the Sunday New York Times, and listening to David Sedaris on NPR (ideally all at the same time). Apple products, indie music, food co-ops, and vintage T-shirts make them weak in the knees. They believe they're unique, yet somehow they're all exactly the same.

Beijing, sometime in the near future: a month has gone missing from official records. No one has any memory of it, and no one could care less - except for a small circle of friends, who will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the sinister cheerfulness and amnesia that have possessed the Chinese nation. When they kidnap a high-ranking official and force him to reveal all, what they learn - not only about their leaders, but also about their own people - stuns them to the core.

If the Watergate scandal was a national nightmare, then maybe the Clinton scandal was a national wet dream, and who better to narrate it than the screenwriter Joe Eszterhas? In American Rhapsody, Eszterhas, whose credits include Basic Instinct and Showgirls, takes us through the events that threatened to topple a president. From scandalmongers Matt Drudge and Ken Starr, to his final, unimpeachable witness, Willard - none other than President Clinton's talking penis - Eszterhas gives us the goods.

Dr. Edith Vane, scholar of English literature, is contentedly ensconced at the University of Inivea. Her dissertation on pioneer housewife memoirist Beulah Crump-Withers is about to be published, and her job's finally safe, if she only can fill out her AAO properly. She's a little anxious, but a new floral blouse and her therapist's repeated assurance that she is the architect of her own life should fix that. All should be well, really. Except for her broken washing machine, her fickle new girlfriend, her missing friend Coral.

The Chosen One must be retrieved from Earth. He will bring down the wall and restore the kingdom to glory. His name is Tom Parking. With this mysterious yet oddly ordinary-looking prophecy, Tom’s fate is sealed: he’s been plucked from his life and whisked away to a magical kingdom to be its Chosen One.

Algunos cuentos incluidos: Hay sitio para dos. La serpiente. Hagase como se ordena. Agudeza Gascona. Los estafadores. El alcahuete castigado. El marido escarmentado. Que me engañen siempre asi!!! La ley de Talion. El esposo complaciente.

From the elections of Barack Obama and Donald Trump to the tragic events of Ferguson and Charlottesville, the subject of race has come to the forefront of American consciousness. Legendary satirist D. L. Hughley offers his own cutting observations on this contentious issue that continues to traumatize the nation, a wound made more painful by the ongoing comments and actions of the 45th president. Hughley uses humor to draw attention to injustice, sardonically offering advice on a number of lessons, like "How to make cops feel more comfortable while they're handcuffing you".

Through strange metaphysical circumstances, failed screenwriter Brad Cohen finds himself caught in an infinite time loop, forced to relive the first forty years of his life again and again. Each "repeat," Brad wakes up in the womb on what was supposed to be his fortieth birthday, with full knowledge of what's come before. In various timelines, he becomes a successful political pundit, a game-show champion, a playboy, and a master manipulator of the stock market, but none of them seems to lead him out of his predicament.