Victor Losa has spent his life studying magic – he lives, breathes and dreams it. His mentor, Mario Galvan, taught him not only the practical aspects of the art, but also its history and in particular the lives of famous Victorian magicians such as Hoffman, Maskelyne, and Cooke, and the tricks that made them famous: the line of fire, the disappearing woman. But perhaps the most enigmatic historical figure of all is Peter Grouse, a pickpocket who decided to challenge the best magicians of the day. Now, […]

Taking its cue from practices of reading texts in literary and cultural studies, this book considers the computer game as a new and emerging mode of contemporary storytelling. In a carefully organized study, Barry Atkins discusses questions of narrative and realism in four of the most significant games of the last decade: Tomb Raider, Half-Life, Close Combat and SimCity. This is a work for both the student of contemporary culture and those game-players who are interested in how computer games tell their stories. GBS_insertEmbeddedViewer(“dxMLnayXwTQC”, 500,400);

You’ve heard the stories about the dark side of the internet–hackers, #gamergate, anonymous mobs attacking an unlucky victim, and revenge porn–but they remain just that: stories. Surely these things would never happen to you. Zoe Quinn used to feel the same way. She is a video game developer whose ex-boyfriend published a crazed blog post cobbled together from private information, half-truths, and outright fictions, along with a rallying cry to the online hordes to go after her. They answered in the form of a so-called movement known […]