Satire Science

John Smith is the first person ever sent downstairs due to a mix-up in the paperwork. While this is sorted out, he is assigned to work at Hades' local television station, where he must deal with strange characters and stranger programming. All the more bizarre, he arrived just in time for Founder's Day.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich continues to be a polarizing figure in America. But fear not! The coauthor of Contract with America is always good for another tale or two, regaling youngsters with “The Three Little Pigs and the Perils of Subsidized Housing,” “Cinderella and the Glass Ceiling,” and “Hillary the Snow Queen"—to name just a few.

Upon their return from a largely disappointing trip to Florida, Kallie and AB are both expecting a slow week. However, their expectations are quickly subverted when AB finds out there are still more radioactive doughnuts out in the city—and one's been eaten by none other than Officer Max Powers, the same man who'd helped Kallie the night of her Model Middle America audition. And when Officer Powers becomes his greatest fear—a man with nothing left to lose, wildly desperate to enact vengeance against his brother's killer—Kallie and AB have new, unpleasant questions to answer.

Kallie's not quite sure about being a superhero, but she's definitely sure she's not going to be just a fat one.

As one of the popular girls at her high school, Kallie Grande-White knows how to influence the crowds as her model-ready un-super self. But when a pair of campaigning politicians come to Cuttingham City in hopes of winning Fatgirl's endorsement, Kallie is quick to send them packing. Between all the attention from the Model Middle America show, social media, and the news, she's had enough people talking for her that she doesn't want to actually say anything - and it doesn't help that she's not sure how John Weber and James Walter are really that different from each other.

After a long, adventurous and exhausting spring break, Kallie's almost ready to go back to school just so she can forget about her mother, trouble with Azure, and especially everything that happened with Zeus. But trouble never takes a break, especially when Kallie's certain AB's enemy is targeting her friends and turning them into Alterants—and when Amory reaches out to Fatgirl over her website, Kallie fears the worst. But her worst fears are nothing compared to Amory's.

One: A time jumper is desperate to remain in this 'overlap' journey but his time is running out. Breaking his self-imposed travel rules, Marcus started a family. Now he will leave not only his deceased wife Ellie, again, but will also suffer the weight of a heart broken by being pulled from his children - unless he can find a way to extend his stay in the overlap.

An independent research facility, with no particular disciplinary focus and no public sector grant money or foundation funding, is doing its best to "sound kosher", trying to keep the operations flowing. An overworked lab sciences foundation director has been working tirelessly to keep funding coming in for the aging, if not otherwise obsolete somewhat mediocre research facility, procuring the oddest of scientific studies.

Kallie Grande-White literally can't take this anymore - even though she has to. As Fatgirl, her city's famous superhero, she's pretty sure she'd die of embarrassment if anyone else knew the truth. So, when local news anchorwoman Gynnifer Stills makes it her ultimate career goal to discover Fatgirl's real identity - recruiting the unwitting help of some former Alterants, including Blake Turner - Kallie is faced with overwhelming pressure.

A flab-normal life.... Kallie Grande-White can pretend to go on with her life, but reminders of her transgressions into heroism continuously follow her throughout her day - especially now that her awkward classmate Zeus Evans knows her secret. Even with the return of Model Middle America to Cuttingham City, to attempt another round of modeling auditions, Kallie soon realizes there is no escaping from her double-sized life when one of the show’s producer asks for Fatgirl’s assistance.

There's nothing that 17-year-old Kallie Grande-White hungers for more than to be a famous model like her mother - except maybe actually food. But that's a small inconvenience, especially with the Model Middle America reality show holding auditions for the Next Top Heartland Teen Heartthrob Model right in Kallie's hometown. Now that she has a chance to make her dream come true, Kallie is determined not to let anything stand in her way - not her best frenemy, Amory Franklin, not her lacrosse-playing crush, and especially not the new, awkward fat kid in her computer class.

Jon Gilligan is the only man with a pulse in a city of the undead. It's his job to maintain order between the factions of walking corpses and disembodied spirits. The workload has been driving him a little insane, leading him to take on the persona of a noir detective. He narrates his adventures, casting himself as a hero to all those under his watch.

Question: when do sewer rats in suburbia acquire intelligence and cunning? Answer: when they begin calling each other names. For Duff and Tuff, newly arrived on Conner's lawn after being ejected from a drain culvert during a flood, their I.Q. soon begins to rise while Conner's falls. Conner, you see, is obsessed with TV. Now the plan is to keep this bachelor from going through with his vow to change his life (and their situation) by pretending to be his supposedly deceased ex wife. Inspired by "Who Moved My Cheese?", this short fable has but one lesson: imagination is linked to reading, not watching television.

The antidote to those cotton-candy platitudes that are all too familiar to anyone who’s ever worn a mortarboard, Wheelan’s 10 head-turning aphorisms - backed up by a PhD in public policy and extensive social science research - set the record straight. Readers everywhere agreed, turning a Dartmouth Class Day speech that had gone viral into a best-selling book.

My creator once reveled in his mastery over life and death. He dug from graves, stitched me together, and brought me to life. However, he never anticipated how hard it would be to get good tech support.

A smart, funny political satire. It is written as if a future woman president published what she wanted to say, before she becomes president. A look at politics through a different, and definitely provocative, lens. As a woman she has a lot to say about the insanity of war as a solution to anything in this century, much less labeling and drugging children instead of making schools exciting for young lives. A fast, furious, sometimes deep listen.

Colonies require support and expansion to other planets means shipping supplies to them. Pirates love long supply chains and not even Elon Musk is invulnerable, although there is reason to believe he might do slightly better than cumbersome governments. This highly speculative look at the perils of building the first functional Mars colony stars Elon Musk.

Space exploration gone different. Although HAM was the first US astronaut, at one point in history it seemed inevitable that the first deep-space pilots would be humans. Of course, we know that things didn't work out that way. This is the story as it actually unfolded, including the real story of Tolan Baboon's flight and his best dirty jokes. A humorous alternate history of the space program.

In an alternate timeline, John F. Kennedy goes into acting instead of politics and ends up as captain of the starship Enterprise. But what if history has its own plan for JFK? This savage satire of American politics and Hollywood egos was written by Star Trek's most notorious scribe, David Gerrold, who also wrote Star Trek's popular "Trouble with Tribbles" episode.

Running afoul of a pants-less ghost pirate wasn't exactly what paranormal psychologist Matilda Schmidt had in mind when she took off for some R&R. Even at a quiet beach-side bungalow, Matilda can't catch a moment's peace when the restless spirits aren't the only ones haunting her bedroom. Marooned by a disappearing demigod, and seeking a solution to banish her unwelcome guests, Matilda rides shotgun with a hit man who's better at making ghosts than eliminating them.