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Contemporary Fantasy
Contemporary fantasy, also known as modern fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy, set in the present day or, more accurately, the time period of the maker. It is perhaps most popular for its subgenre, urban fantasy. Strictly, supernatural fiction can be said to be part of contemporary fantasy since it has fantasy elements and is set in a contemporary setting. In practice, however, supernatural fiction is a well-established genre in its own right, with its own distinctive conventions. Definition and overview These terms are used to describe stories set in the putative real world (often referred to as ''consensus reality'') in contemporary times, in which magic and magical creatures exist but are not commonly seen or understood as such, either living in the interstices of our world or leaking over from alternate worlds. It thus has much in common with, and sometimes overlaps with secret history; a work of fantasy in which the magic could not remain secret, or does not have any known ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genre
Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria, yet genres can be aesthetic, rhetorical, communicative, or functional. Genres form by conventions that change over time as cultures invent new genres and discontinue the use of old ones. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand-alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, but genres are amalgams of these texts based on agreed-upon or socially inferred conventions. Some genres may have rigid, strictly adhered-to guidelines, while others may show great flexibility. Genre began as an absolute classification system for ancient Greek literature, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Potter
''Harry Potter'' is a series of seven fantasy literature, fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young Magician (fantasy), wizard, Harry Potter (character), Harry Potter, and his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The main story arc concerns Harry's struggle against Lord Voldemort, a Black magic, dark wizard who intends to become Immortality, immortal, overthrow the wizard governing body known as the Ministry of Magic and subjugate all wizards and Muggles (non-magical people). The series was originally published in English by Bloomsbury Publishing, Bloomsbury in the United Kingdom and Scholastic Corporation, Scholastic Press in the United States. All versions around the world are printed by Grafica Veneta in Italy. A series of many genres, including fantasy, drama, Coming-of-age story, coming-of-age fiction, and the British school story (which i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Denis Wheatley
Dennis Yeats Wheatley (8 January 1897 – 10 November 1977) was a British writer whose prolific output of thrillers and occult novels made him one of the world's best-selling authors from the 1930s through the 1960s. His Gregory Sallust series was one of the main inspirations for Ian Fleming's James Bond stories. Early life Wheatley was born at 10 Raleigh Gardens, Brixton Hill, London to Albert David and Florence Elizabeth Harriet (Baker) Wheatley. He was the eldest of three children in the family, which owned Wheatley & Son of Mayfair, a wine business. He admitted to having little aptitude for schooling and was later expelled from Dulwich College for allegedly forming a "secret society" (as he mentions in his introduction to '' The Devil Rides Out''). Soon after his expulsion Wheatley became a British Merchant Navy officer cadet on the training ship HMS ''Worcester''. Military service Wheatley was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant into the Royal Field Artillery during th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fearsome Creatures Of The Lumberwoods
''Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts'' is a 1910 fantasy field guide by William Thomas Cox (1878–1961), Minnesota’s first State Forester and Commissioner of Conservation, with illustrations by Coert du Bois (1881–1960; US Consul and forester) and Latin classifications by George Bishop Sudworth (1862–1927; Chief Dendrologist of the Forest Service.) The text is a noteworthy resource on folklore, as a century after its initial publication ''Fearsome Creatures'' remains one of the principal sources on legendary creatures of the United States and Canada. Summary The book presents various sketches of fearsome critters from North American folklore, with descriptions by Cox preceded by full-page landscape illustrations by du Bois. Like in a traditional field guide, each animal is assigned a Latin classification (by Sudworth), afterward noting their habitat, physical makeup, and behavior. At the end of each account; however, there i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Darker Than You Think
''Darker Than You Think'' is a science fantasy novel by American writer Jack Williamson. Originally a novelette, it was expanded into novel length and published by Fantasy Press in 1948. The short version was published in ''Unknown'' in 1940. It was reprinted by UK-based Orion Books in 2003 as volume 38 of their Fantasy Masterworks series. Plot The novel begins with the announcement from an ethnological expedition to Mongolia that among humanity exist people who can turn themselves into animals. However, the expedition's spokesman dies of a sudden mysterious seizure in the midst of a press conference, just as he was about to provide detailed proof of his assertions. His friend, journalist Will Barbee, suspects his alleged colleague, the fascinating April Bell. Determined to discover the truth, but also attracted by Bell, Barbee finds out that in a past era a war took place in which ''Homo sapiens'' defeated werewolves (''Homo lycanthropus'') – who can, in fact, also turn them ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Williamson
John Stewart Williamson (April 29, 1908 – November 10, 2006), who wrote as Jack Williamson, was an American list of science fiction authors, science fiction writer, often called the "Dean of Science Fiction". He is also credited with one of the first uses of the term ''genetic engineering''. Early in his career he sometimes used the pseudonyms Will Stewart and Nils O. Sonderlund. Early life Williamson was born April 29, 1908 in Bisbee, Arizona, Bisbee, Arizona Territory. According to his own account, the first three years of his life were spent on a ranch at the top of the Sierra Madre Mountains on the headwaters of the Yaqui River in Sonora, Mexico. He spent much of the rest of his early childhood in western Texas. In search of better pastures, his family migrated to rural New Mexico in a horse-drawn Conestoga wagon, covered wagon in 1915.Williamson, Jack. ''Wonder's Child: My Life in Science Fiction'' (Benbella Books, 2005) The farming was difficult there and the family ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Bottle Imp
"The Bottle Imp" is an 1891 short story by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson usually found in the short story collection ''Island Nights' Entertainments''. It was first published in the '' New York Herald'' (February–March 1891) and '' Black and White'' London (March–April 1891). In it, the protagonist buys a bottle with an imp inside that grants wishes. However, the bottle is cursed; if the holder dies bearing it, his or her soul is forfeit to hell. Plot Keawe, a poor Native Hawaiian, buys a strange unbreakable bottle from a sad, elderly gentleman who credits the bottle with his fortune. He promises that an imp residing in the bottle will also grant Keawe his every desire. Of course, there is a catch. The bottle must be sold, for cash, at a loss, i.e. for less than its owner originally paid, and cannot be thrown or given away, or else it will magically return to him. All of these rules must be explained by each seller to each purchaser. If an owner of the bott ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as ''Treasure Island'', ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'', '' Kidnapped'' and ''A Child's Garden of Verses''. Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life, but continued to write prolifically and travel widely in defiance of his poor health. As a young man, he mixed in London literary circles, receiving encouragement from Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, Leslie Stephen and W. E. Henley, the last of whom may have provided the model for Long John Silver in ''Treasure Island''. In 1890, he settled in Samoa where, alarmed at increasing European and American influence in the South Sea islands, his writing turned away from romance and adventure fiction toward a darker realism. He died of a stroke in his island home in 1894 at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The 35th Of May, Or Conrad's Ride To The South Seas
''The 35th of May, or Conrad's Ride to the South Seas'' (''Der 35. Mai oder Konrad reitet in die Südsee'' in German, its original language) is a novel by Erich Kästner, first published in 1931 in literature, 1931. Unlike most of Kästner's other works - set in a completely realistic contemporary Germany - the present book is a work of fantasy and satire. In his preface to the 1928 ''Emil and the Detectives'' Kästner recounts that he intended to write a humorous South Sea adventure story, but got stuck with the concrete details and finally followed the advice of a friend to write instead a book set in the familiar Berlin reality. Several of the plot details and characters briefly mentioned where Kästner describes his aborted fantasy were taken up in "35th of May", written four years later. Plot introduction The novel is about Conrad, a young boy, who spends each Thursday afternoon with his uncle, Mr. Ringelhuth. One Thursday — it happens to be the 35th of May — they meet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erich Kästner
Emil Erich Kästner (; 23 February 1899 – 29 July 1974) was a German writer, poet, screenwriter and satirist, known primarily for his humorous, socially astute poems and for children's books including '' Emil and the Detectives''. He received the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1960 for his autobiography '. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in six separate years. Biography Dresden 1899–1919 Kästner was born in Dresden, Saxony, and grew up on Königsbrücker Straße in Dresden's Äußere Neustadt. Close by, the Erich Kästner Museum was subsequently opened in the Villa Augustin that had belonged to Kästner's uncle Franz Augustin. Kästner's father, Emil Richard Kästner, was a master saddlemaker. His mother, Ida Amalia (née Augustin), had been a maidservant, but in her thirties she trained as a hairstylist in order to supplement her husband's income. Kästner had a particularly close relationship with his mother. When he was living ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Imperial Germany
The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary empire led by an emperor, although has been used in German to denote the Roman Empire because it had a weak hereditary tradition. In the case of the German Empire, the official name was , which is properly translated as "German Empire" because the official position of head of state in the constitution of the German Empire was officially a "presidency" of a confederation of German states led by the King of Prussia who would assume "the title of German Emperor" as referring to the German people, but was not emperor of Germany as in an emperor of a state. –The German Empire" ''Harper's New Monthly Magazine''. vol. 63, issue 376, pp. 591–603; here p. 593. also referred to as Imperial Germany, the Second Reich, as well as simply Germany, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilhelm II, German Emperor
Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; 27 January 18594 June 1941) was the last German Emperor (german: Kaiser) and King of Prussia, reigning from 15 June 1888 until his abdication on 9 November 1918. Despite strengthening the German Empire's position as a great power by building a powerful navy, his tactless public statements and erratic foreign policy greatly antagonized the international community and are considered by many to be one of the underlying causes of World War I. When the German war effort collapsed after a series of crushing defeats on the Western Front in 1918, he was forced to abdicate, thereby marking the end of the German Empire and the House of Hohenzollern's 300-year reign in Prussia and 500-year reign in Brandenburg. Wilhelm II was the son of Prince Frederick William of Prussia and Victoria, German Empress Consort. His father was the son of Wilhelm I, German Emperor, and his mother was the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
