The publishing world has just received its bill of health, and the prognosis isn't pretty. Literary marauders are rising up from the hazardous material bins labeled Horror, Surrealism, and Science Fiction. Here the pen is not merely mightier than the sword; it is a plague heralding the apocalypse for convention, writing a dirge for complacency. The stories herein explore illness in all its forms: physical, mental, and societal. These sick stories are horrendous, hilarious, and stupefying dissections of creative minds on the scalpel's edge.

This book brings together as complete a record of traditional Yupik rules and rituals as is possible in the late twentieth century. Incorporating elders' recollections of the system of ruled boundaries and ritual passages that guided their parents and grandparents a century ago, Ann Fienup-Riordan brings into focus the complex, creative Yupik world view - expressed by ceremonial exchanges and the cycling of names, gifts, and persons - which continues to shape daily life in communities along the Bering Sea coast. Her analysis is illustrated with many contemporary and historical photographs. Identifying "metaphors to live by, " Fienup-Riordan tells of "the Boy Who Went to Live with Seals" and "the Girl Who Returned from the Dead." She explains how in Yupik cosmology their stories illustrate relationships among human beings, animals, and the spirit world - the "boundaries and passages" between death and the renewal of life.

The use of psychedelic drugs plants is rising, and with it the number of reports narrating encounters with otherworldly visionary beings. Approaches to these experiences have often been literal, archetypal or dismissive. Evolutionary psychology and the cognitive science of religion suggest innate and non-imagistic mental foundations for these phenomena arising from easily-triggered evolutionary functions during emotive periods of high cognitive demand. Such functions include agent detection, social intelligence faculties and metacognition. This wide-ranging book explores how our deepest mental processes predispose us as humans to believe in supernatural agents, and presents a new hypothesis of how these same cognitions facilitate the emergence of those agents to become present when psychedelic drugs and plants are ingested. Bruce concludes that visionary beings shimmer within as awe-inspiring products of the mind, an experience which rests at the heart of what it is to be human.

For the first time ever, Comet Press brings you their infamous THINGS anthologies in one terrifying trio, featuring authors such as Ramsey Campbell, Graham Masterton, Tim Curran, John Shirley, Simon Wood, Fred Venturini and many more. Three anthologies in one, with 700 pages and 42 stories, including the newest book in the series, STIFF THINGS! VILE THINGS: EXTREME DEVIATIONS OF HORROR -- the ultimate collection of extreme horror from award-winning masters and up-and-coming authors of macabre fiction. SICK THINGS: EXTREME CREATURE HORROR -- a disturbing collection of extreme creature horror with 17 deviant and gore-soaked stories featuring demons, cannibals, mutants, golems, werewolves, and many more vile creatures, monsters, and beasts. STIFF THINGS: THE SPLATTERP0RN ANTHOLOGY-- ratchets up the er0ticism and visceral intensity with twisted hardcore stories that penetrate new depths of psychosexual horror. Not for the squeamish or prudish. Don’t get any on you. EDITORIAL REVIEWS "This book is a definite for any extreme horror fan. Full of terror, sex, and gore, I don't recommend this for the faint of heart or for a light read at a beauty salon." --FANGORIA (on Vile Things) "But dismembered members aside, there are no cheap gross-outs here; even though the focus is clearly on the vile and unpalatable these don't feel like stories that were written with the sole purpose of being labeled 'extreme horror' or to merely revel in their graphic, gory descriptions. Simply put, VILE THINGS is every deviant horror fan's wet dream." --RUE MORGUE "VILE THINGS is one of the stronger horror anthologies I have come across in some time, its theme literally appears to be centered around creatures, topics, or situations that are so vile it would send a shiver down your spine. It includes stories from both established and newer horror authors, and some of the stories are more extreme than the usual fare."--MONSTER LIBRARIAN "Cover every orifice. Comet Press' new collection is making a beeline for the soft contents of your body--and it doesn't care one bit where it makes its grand entrance, orbital sockets or otherwise. Rest assured this violation will be painful, given the tight confinements of our fallible frames of flesh—but anything less than a full-on ass-rape would probably seem insufficient in the eyes of editrix Cheryl Mullenax…Mullenax has assembled a rogue's gallery of intelligent grotesqueries that will temper one's appetite hours after closing the book…" --FANGORIA (on Sick Things) “I thoroughly enjoyed reading this Anthology. Like I said in the beginning, no story fell short for me. Everyone brought an er0tic taste that stimulated every sense of my being. I highly recommend this book who love some deranged er0tic horror.” -- SPLATTER CAFE (on Stiff Things)

Author's sledge expedition along the Arctic coast of Siberia from Waigatz Island to Lapland, 1893-94, to test cold weather clothing and equipment and to study the Samoyed people.

What can case studies about the lived experiences of cancer contribute to an interest in the concept of structural vulnerability? And can a consideration of structural vulnerability enhance applied anthropological work in cancer prevention and control? To answer these questions the contributors in this volume explore what it means to be structurally vulnerable; how structural vulnerabilities intersect with cancer risk, diagnosis, care seeking, caregiving, clinical-trial participation, and survivorship; and how differing local, national, and global political contexts and histories inform vulnerability. These case studies illustrate how quotidian experiences of structural vulnerability influence and are altered by a cancer diagnosis at various points in the continuum of care. In examining cancer as a set of diseases and biosocial phenomena, the contributors extend structural vulnerability beyond its original conceptualization to encompass spatiality, temporality, and biosocial shifts in both individual and institutional arrangements.