|
Delos D. Harriman
Delos David Harriman, known as D.D. Harriman, is a character in the fiction of science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein. He is an entrepreneurial businessman who masterminded the first landing on the Moon as a private business venture. His story is part of Heinlein's Future History. Harriman's first appearance in print was in the story "Requiem" which described his death while pursuing his dream of landing on the Moon himself. Having opened space to humankind he was, like Moses, denied the sight of his promised land by a combination of health and legal issues. At the end of his life, Harriman decides to clandestinely arrange to go to the Moon himself. Harriman meets two spacemen, Captain James (Mac) McIntyre and Engineer Charles (Charlie) Cummings, who are down on their luck and giving rocketship rides at county fairs. He secretly hires them and pays to have an old orbital ship purchased and upgraded for a flight to the Moon. To finance this, he liquidates his financial h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science Fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, extraterrestrial life, sentient artificial intelligence, cybernetics, certain forms of immortality (like mind uploading), and the singularity. Science fiction predicted several existing inventions, such as the atomic bomb, robots, and borazon, whose names entirely match their fictional predecessors. In addition, science fiction might serve as an outlet to facilitate future scientific and technological innovations. Science fiction can trace its roots to ancient mythology. It is also related to fantasy, horror, and superhero fiction and contains many subgenres. Its exact definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers. Science fiction, in literature, film, television, and other media, has beco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Man Who Sold The Moon
"The Man Who Sold the Moon" is a science fiction novella by American author Robert A. Heinlein, written in 1949 and published in 1950. A part of his ''Future History'' and prequel to "Requiem", it covers events around a fictional first Moon landing in 1978 and the schemes of Delos D. Harriman, a businessman who is determined to personally reach and control the Moon. Plot Delos David "D. D." Harriman, "the last of the Robber Barons", is obsessed with being the first to travel to—and possess—the Moon. He asks his business partner, George Strong, and other tycoons to invest in the venture. Most dismiss Harriman's plans as foolhardy: Nuclear rocket fuel is scarce as the space station that produces it blew up, also destroying the only existing spaceship. The necessary technology for a chemical-fueled rocket stretches the boundaries of current engineering. The endeavor is both incredibly costly and of uncertain profitability. One skeptic offers to sell "all of my interes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Averell Harriman
William Averell Harriman (November 15, 1891July 26, 1986), better known as Averell Harriman, was an American Democratic politician, businessman, and diplomat. The son of railroad baron E. H. Harriman, he served as Secretary of Commerce under President Harry S. Truman, and later as the 48th governor of New York. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952 and 1956, as well as a core member of the group of foreign policy elders known as " The Wise Men". While attending Groton School and Yale University, he made contacts that led to creation of a banking firm that eventually merged into Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. He owned parts of various other companies, including Union Pacific Railroad, Merchant Shipping Corporation, and Polaroid Corporation. During the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harriman served in the National Recovery Administration and on the Business Advisory Council before moving into foreign policy roles. After helping to coor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lazarus Long
Lazarus Long is a fictional character featured in a number of science fiction novels by Robert A. Heinlein. Born in 1912 in the third generation of a selective breeding experiment run by the Ira Howard Foundation, Lazarus (birth name Woodrow Wilson Smith) becomes unusually long-lived, living well over two thousand years with the aid of occasional rejuvenation treatments. Heinlein "patterned" Long on science fiction writer Edward E. Smith, mixed with Jack Williamson's fictional Giles Habibula. His exact (natural) life span is never revealed. In his introduction at the beginning of ''Methuselah's Children'', he claims he is 213 years old. Approximately 75 years pass during the course of the novel, but because large amounts of this time are spent traveling close to the speed of light, the 75-year measurement is an expression of the time elapsed on Earth, rather than time seen from his perspective. At one point, he estimates his natural life span to be around 250 years, but this nu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maureen Johnson (Heinlein Character)
Maureen Johnson Smith Long (July 4, 1882 – "June 20, 1982") most often referred to as Maureen Johnson, is a fictional character in several science fiction novels by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. She is the mother, lover, and eventual wife of Lazarus Long, the longest-living member of Heinlein's fictional Howard families. She is the only character from the "Lazarus Long cycle" to have an entire fictional memoir devoted to her life. Background Maureen first appears as a secondary character in the 1973 novel ''Time Enough for Love''. She appears briefly in '' The Number of the Beast'' (1980) and ''The Cat Who Walks Through Walls'' (1985) and recounts her own life story, and sometimes contradictory versions of events recorded in other Heinlein stories, in 1987's ''To Sail Beyond the Sunset''. Early life and marriage Maureen was born in Missouri on July 4, 1882, the daughter of Doctor Ira Johnson, a member of the Howard Families. As a young teenager, Maureen discovers t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
To Sail Beyond The Sunset
''To Sail Beyond the Sunset'' is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1987. It was the last novel published before his death in 1988. The title is taken from the poem "Ulysses", by Alfred Tennyson. The stanza of which it is a part, quoted by a character in the novel, is as follows: ... my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It is the final part of the "Lazarus Long" cycle of stories, involving time travel, parallel dimensions, free love, voluntary incest, and a concept that Heinlein named pantheistic solipsism, or 'World as Myth': the theory that universes are created by the act of imagining them, so that somewhere (for example) the Land of Oz is real. Other books in the cycle include ''Methuselah's Children'', ''Time Enough for Love'', '' The Number of the Beast'', and ''The Cat Who Walks Through Walls''. Plot The book is a memoir of Maureen Johnson Smith Long, mother, lover, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johann Sebastian Bach Smith
Johann, typically a male given name, is the German form of ''Iohannes'', which is the Latin form of the Greek name ''Iōánnēs'' (), itself derived from Hebrew name ''Yochanan'' () in turn from its extended form (), meaning "Yahweh is Gracious" or "Yahweh is Merciful". Its English language equivalent is John. It is uncommon as a surname. People People with the name Johann include: Mononym *Johann, Count of Cleves (died 1368), nobleman of the Holy Roman Empire *Johann, Count of Leiningen-Dagsburg-Falkenburg (1662–1698), German nobleman *Johann, Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (1578–1638), German nobleman A–K * Johann Adam Hiller (1728–1804), German composer * Johann Adam Reincken (1643–1722), Dutch/German organist * Johann Adam Remele (died 1740), German court painter * Johann Adolf I, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels (1649–1697) * Johann Adolph Hasse (1699-1783), German Composer * Johann Altfuldisch (1911—1947), German Nazi SS concentration camp officer executed for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billionaire
A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least one billion (1,000,000,000, i.e., a thousand million) units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. The American business magazine ''Forbes'' produces a global list of known U.S. dollar billionaires every year and updates an Internet version of this list in real time. The American oil magnate John D. Rockefeller became the world's first confirmed U.S. dollar billionaire in 1916. As of 2018, there are over 2,200 U.S. dollar billionaires worldwide, with a combined wealth of over US$ 9.1 trillion, up from in 2017. According to a 2017 Oxfam report, the top eight richest billionaires own as much combined wealth as "half the human race". As of 2021, eight people have reached the status of USD hectobillionaires, meaning that each has had a net worth of at least $100 billion. Current U.S. dollar billionaires According to the ''UBS/PwC Billionaires Report ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robber Baron (industrialist)
Robber baron is a derogatory term of social criticism originally applied to certain wealthy and powerful 19th-century American businessmen. The term appeared as early as the August 1870 issue of ''The Atlantic Monthly'' magazine. By the late 19th century, the term was typically applied to businessmen who purportedly used exploitative practices to amass their wealth. These practices included exerting control over natural resources, influencing high levels of government, paying subsistence wages, squashing competition by acquiring their competitors to create monopolies and raise prices, and schemes to sell stock at inflated prices to unsuspecting investors. The term combines the sense of criminal ("robber") and illegitimate aristocracy (a baron is an illegitimate role in a republic).Worth Robert Miller, ''Populist cartoons: an illustrated history of the third-party movement in the 1890s '' (2011) p. 13 Usage The term robber baron derives from the ''Raubritter'' (''robber knights'') ... [...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] |
Robert A
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honour, praise, renown" and ''berht'' "bright, light, shining"). It is the second most frequently used given name of ancient Germanic origin. It is also in use as a surname. Another commonly used form of the name is Rupert. After becoming widely used in Continental Europe it entered England in its Old French form ''Robert'', where an Old English cognate form (''Hrēodbēorht'', ''Hrodberht'', ''Hrēodbēorð'', ''Hrœdbœrð'', ''Hrœdberð'', ''Hrōðberχtŕ'') had existed before the Norman Conquest. The feminine version is Roberta. The Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish form is Roberto. Robert is also a common name in many Germanic languages, including English, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Scots, Danish, and Icelandic. It can be use ... [...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] |
.svg "Click for more on -> Billionaire")
