The Big U

The Big U (1984) is Neal Stephenson's first published novel, a satire of campus life.

Plot

The story chronicles the disillusionment of a number of young intellectuals as they encounter the realities of the higher education establishment parodied in the story. Over time their lives and sanity disintegrate in different ways through a series of escalating events that culminates with a full-scale civil war raging on the campus of American Megaversity.

Told in first person from the perspective of Bud, a lecturer in Remote Sensing new to the university, the book attacks and makes fun of just about every conceivable group at university, though its portraits of the nerds/computer scientists/role players tend to be more detailed than those of other factions.

The events take place at a fictitious big university consisting of a single building (a central complex with eight towers containing student housing), making the university an enclosed universe of its own. Stephenson uses this fact to take what starts as a mostly realistic satire and move it further and further into the realm of improbability, with giant radioactive rats, hordes of bats and a lab-made railgun.

Big!

Big! is a TV series in which an episode consists of a team of engineers manufacturing the world's biggest items (usually a household item that's normally hand carried, scaled up to proportions that make the items unusable without JCBs and Cherrypickers) for the sake of setting world records.

The devices have to function to qualify.

The series originally aired on Discovery Channel in 2004. It is currently airing on The Science Channel weekday mornings.

Cast

Episodes

Big

Big means large or of great size.

Big or BIG may also refer to:

Film and television

Music

Places

Organizations

The Perhapanauts

The Perhapanauts is an American comic book series created by writer Todd Dezago and artist Craig Rousseau in 2005.

The first two mini-series, "First Blood" and "Second Chances," were published by Dark Horse Comics, although it was announced on October 31, 2007, that forthcoming Perhapanauts comics would be published by Image Comics.

Plot

The Image Comics series began with an annual in February 2008, "Jersey Devil", followed by what may either be numerous upcoming mini-series or an ongoing series. The first series is "Triangle" taking the team into the Bermuda Triangle, which starts publication in April 2008.

The story follows a team of supernatural investigators (in that they both investigate the supernatural, and are supernatural beings who investigate) working for Bedlam, a top-secret government agency. The main focus of the stories are on Blue Group, one team of Bedlam operatives.

The members of Blue Group are Arisa Hines, the group's leader who has psychic powers; Big, a Sasquatch whose intelligence has been artificially raised; Choopie, a Chupacabra with a somewhat erratic personality; MG, a mysterious being who appears human but has the power to travel to other dimensions; and Molly MacAllistar, a ghost. Other characters in the series include Joann DeFile, a psychic who works as an adviser for Bedlam; Peter Hammerskold, a former Marine with psychic powers who is the leader of Bedlam's Red Group and sees Blue Group as rivals; the Merrow, a water elemental fairy who works on Red Group; and Karl, a Mothman who is a Bedlam reservist and would like to be a full-time member of Blue Group.