"For Jackie Pierce, everything changed the summer of 1979, when she spent three months of infinite freedom at her bohemian uncle's sprawling estate on the California coast. As musicians, artists, and free spirits gathered at The Sandcastle for the season in pursuit of inspiration and communal living, Jackie and her cousin Willa fell into a fast friendship, testing their limits along the rocky beach and in the wild woods ... until the summer abruptly...

When Star Wars: A New Hope was first released in 1977, part of its appeal was that the world it presented felt alive. Landspeeders and starships were dirty. Droids broke down. And it was filled with cool, weird, and really weird background characters. (Really, just take a look around the Mos Eisley cantina.) Never mind Han, Luke, Leia, Darth Vader, and Obi-Wan. Who were these other guys? What was their story? Just seeing them brought up questions...

At the Dawn of Man, a group of hominids encounters a mysterious black monolith that is alien to their surroundings. A hominid discovers the first weapon, using a bone to kill prey. The bone is tossed in the air and it's a 21st century spacecraft hovering over the Earth, skipping ahead millions of years in technological development only to imply that man hasn't advanced very far at all psychologically. U.S. scientist Dr. Heywood Floyd travels to the...