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Hard To Be A God
''Hard to Be a God'' (russian: Трудно быть богом, translit=''Trudno byt' bogom'') is a 1964 science-fiction novel by the Soviet writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, set in the Noon Universe. Premise and themes The novel follows Anton (alias Don Rumata throughout the book), an undercover operative from the future planet Earth, in his mission on an alien planet that is populated by human beings whose society has not advanced beyond the Middle Ages. The novel's core idea is that human progress throughout the centuries is often cruel and bloody, and that religion and blind faith can be effective tools of oppression, working to destroy the emerging scientific disciplines and enlightenment. The title refers to Anton's perception of his precarious role as an observer on the planet, for while he has far more advanced knowledge than the people around him, he is forbidden to assist too actively as his assistance would interfere with the natural progress of history. The boo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arkady And Boris Strugatsky
The brothers Arkady Natanovich Strugatsky (russian: Аркадий Натанович Стругацкий; 28 August 1925 – 12 October 1991) and Boris Natanovich Strugatsky ( ru , Борис Натанович Стругацкий; 14 April 1933 – 19 November 2012) were Soviet-Russian science-fiction authors who collaborated through most of their careers. Life and work The Strugatsky brothers ( or simply ) were born to Natan Strugatsky, an art critic, and his wife, a teacher. Their father was Jewish and their mother was Russian Orthodox. Their early work was influenced by Ivan Yefremov and Stanisław Lem. Later they went on to develop their own, unique style of science fiction writing that emerged from the period of Soviet rationalism in Soviet literature and evolved into novels interpreted as works of social criticism. Their best-known novel, ''Piknik na obochine'', has been translated into English as ''Roadside Picnic''. Andrei Tarkovsky adapted the novel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog (; born 5 September 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with unique talents in obscure fields, or individuals in conflict with nature. He is known for his unique filmmaking process, such as disregarding storyboards, emphasizing improvisation, and placing the cast and crew into similar situations as characters in his films. Herzog started work on his first film ''Herakles'' in 1961, when he was nineteen. Since then he has produced, written, and directed more than sixty feature films and documentaries, such as ''Aguirre, the Wrath of God'' (1972), ''The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser'' (1974), '' Heart of Glass'' (1976), '' Stroszek'' (1977), ''Nosferatu the Vampyre'' (1979), ''Fitzcarraldo'' (1982), ''Cobra Verde'' (1987), ''Lessons of Darkness'' (1992), ''Little Dieter Needs to Fly'' (1997), ''My Best Fiend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Fleischmann
Peter Fleischmann (26 July 1937 – 11 August 2021) was a German film director, screenwriter and producer. He worked also as an actor, cutter, sound engineer, interviewer and speaker. Fleischmann belonged to the New German Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. He is known for directing the 1969 '' Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern'' (''Hunting Scenes from Bavaria''), but he produced films of many genres. Life and career Peter Fleischmann was born in Zweibrücken. He studied at the (German Institute of Film and Television, DIFF) in Munich and Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (''IDHEC'') in Paris. He had contact with representatives of the French Nouvelle Vague movement, and became a friend of Jean-Claude Carrière, with whom he later wrote screenplays. After years as an assistant director, he became a director in 1963 in short films and children's films. In 1967, he directed a documentary, ', about the subculture, which anticipated the gereration conflicts of the 1968 studen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hard To Be A God (1989 Film)
''Hard to Be a God'' (german: Es ist nicht leicht ein Gott zu sein, russian: Трудно быть богом, french: Un dieu rebelle) is a West German-Soviet- French-Swiss science fiction film directed by Peter Fleischmann released in 1989, based on the 1964 novel of the same name by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Grant Stevens performed the title song, while the rest of the musical score was written and played by Hans-Jürgen Fritz, ex-keyboardist for the German progressive rock band Triumvirat. Plot In their third millennium, the people of Earth have found a peaceful life, both large and small. This is possible because they control their emotions extremely and, above all, rely on reason. On a distant planet, however, they find a medieval civilization of humans that they now use to test whether people really no longer have any barbaric instincts, they are poor and ignorant people. For this purpose, the scout Anton is released to live in the middle of the people, in whose eye a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of Book Publishing and Bookselling". With 51 issues a year, the emphasis today is on book reviews. The magazine was founded by bibliographer Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliography ... Frederick Leypoldt in the late 1860s, and had various titles until Leypoldt settled on the name ''The Publishers' Weekly'' (with an apostrophe) in 1872. The publication was a compilation of information about newly published books, collected from publishers and from other sources by Leypoldt, for an audience of booksellers. By 1876, ''The Publishers' Weekly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Galaxy Science Fiction
''Galaxy Science Fiction'' was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published in Boston from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by a French-Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break into the American market. World Editions hired as editor H. L. Gold, who rapidly made ''Galaxy'' the leading science fiction magazine of its time, focusing on stories about social issues rather than technology. Gold published many notable stories during his tenure, including Ray Bradbury's "The Fireman", later expanded as ''Fahrenheit 451''; Robert A. Heinlein's ''The Puppet Masters''; and Alfred Bester's ''The Demolished Man''. In 1952, the magazine was acquired by Robert Guinn, its printer. By the late 1950s, Frederik Pohl was helping Gold with most aspects of the magazine's production. When Gold's health worsened, Pohl took over as editor, starting officially at the end of 1961, though he had been doing the majority of the production work for some time. Under Pohl ''Gala ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theodore Sturgeon
Theodore Sturgeon (; born Edward Hamilton Waldo, February 26, 1918 – May 8, 1985) was an American fiction author of primarily fantasy, science fiction and horror, as well as a critic. He wrote approximately 400 reviews and more than 120 short stories, 11 novels and several scripts for ''Star Trek: The Original Series''. Sturgeon's science fiction novel ''More Than Human'' (1953) won the 1954 International Fantasy Award (for SF and fantasy) as the year's best novel, and the Science Fiction Writers of America ranked "Baby Is Three" number five among the " Greatest Science Fiction Novellas of All Time" to 1964. Ranked by votes for all of their pre-1965 novellas, Sturgeon was second among authors, behind Robert Heinlein. An overview of his work by science fiction critic Sam Moskowitz can be found in the collective biography ''Seekers of Tomorrow''. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Sturgeon in 2000, its fifth class of two dead and two living writers. Bio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chicago Review Press
Chicago Review Press, or CRP, is a U.S. book publisher and an independent company founded in 1973. Chicago Review Press publishes approximately 60 new titles yearly under eight imprints: Chicago Review Press, Lawrence Hill Books, Academy Chicago, Ball Publishing, Council Oak Books, Zephyr Press, Parenting Press, and Amberjack Publishing. They describe their books as "a little quirky, a little edgy, smart". Independent Publishers Group Chicago Review Press, Inc., is the parent company of the Independent Publishers Group Independent Publishers Group (IPG) is a worldwide distributor for independent general, academic, and professional publishers, founded in 1971 to exclusively market titles from independent client publishers to the international book trade. As per ... (IPG). Established in 1971, IPG was the first organization specifically created to market titles from independent presses to the book trade. Chicago Review Press, Inc., acquired Independent Publishers Group in 1987. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (; rus, Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия, Lavréntiy Pávlovich Bériya, p=ˈbʲerʲiə; ka, ლავრენტი ბერია, tr, ; – 23 December 1953) was a Georgian Bolshevik and Soviet politician, Marshal of the Soviet Union and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security, and chief of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) under Joseph Stalin during the Second World War, and promoted to deputy premier under Stalin in 1941. He officially joined the Politburo in 1946. Beria was the longest-lived and most influential of Stalin's secret police chiefs, wielding his most substantial influence during and after the war. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, he was responsible for organizing purges such as the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and officials. He would later also orchestrate the forced upheaval of minorities from the Caucasus as head of the NKVD, an act ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ivan Yefremov
Ivan Antonovich (real patronymic Antipovich) Yefremov ( ru , Ива́н Анто́нович (Анти́пович) Ефре́мов; April 23, 1908 – October 5, 1972; last name sometimes transliterated as Efremov) was a Soviet paleontologist, science-fiction author and social thinker. He founded taphonomy, the study of fossilization patterns. Biography He was born in the village of Vyritsa in Saint Petersburg Governorate on April 23, 1908. His parents divorced during the Russian Revolution. His mother married a Red Army commander and left the children in Kherson to be cared for by an aunt who soon died of typhus. Yefremov survived on his own for some time, after which he joined a Red Army unit as a "son of the regiment" and went to Perekop with it. In 1921, he was discharged and went to Petrograd (today's Saint Petersburg) to study. He completed his education there while combining his studies with a variety of odd jobs. He later commented that "the Revolution was als ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manege Affair
The Manege Affair was an episode when Nikita Khrushchev together with other Party leadership visited an anniversary art exhibition "30 Years of the Moscow Artists' Union" at Moscow Manege on December 1, 1962. It resulted in Khruschev's angry rant against "filth, decadence and sexual deviations" he saw along with the traditional works of Socialist Realism. After the visit, he arranged a campaign to tighten the grip of the Party over culture. This has been described as the beginning of the end of the Cultural Thaw in the Soviet Union. The episode is covered in detail in the book ''Unofficial Art in the Soviet Union'' by Paul Sjeklocha and Igor Mead and in other publications. Khrushchev's anger was fueled further when he was informed about a recent KGB takedown on a clandestine group of homosexual intellectuals, who worked for the '' Iskusstvo'' (''The Art'') publishing house. Speaking to Ely Bielutin, the exhibition host, Khrushchev said: [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
