Immortality, Inc.
''Immortality, Inc.'' is a 1959 science fiction novel by American writer Robert Sheckley. It is also his first novel. A striking concept in the novel is its description of random killings of strangers by people who intend to die. The novel remains one of Sheckley's most popular and critically acclaimed. The serialised form (published under the title ''Time Killer'' in the magazine ''Galaxy Science Fiction'') was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel the same year it was released (1959). The novel has been released in 51 editions since Its initial publication, with the latest being released in 2014 as an e-book. Premise and plot The novel starts with its protagonist, Thomas Blaine, waking in an operating room during the procedure to give him a new host body and thus a new life. He is then soon conscious and aware of the fact he is living in the year 2110, a result of his mind being transferred into a new host body and the procedure completed. He must then learn to live wi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Robert Sheckley
Robert Sheckley (July 16, 1928 – December 9, 2005) was an American writer. First published in the science-fiction magazines of the 1950s, his many quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist, and broadly comical. Nominated for Hugo and Nebula Awards, Sheckley was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001. Biography Sheckley was born to an assimilated Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York City. In 1931 the family moved to Maplewood, New Jersey. Sheckley attended Columbia High School, where he discovered science fiction. He graduated in 1946 and hitchhiked to California the same year, where he tried numerous jobs: landscape gardener, pretzel salesman, barman, milkman, warehouseman, and general laborer "board man" in a hand-painted necktie studio. Finally, still in 1946, he joined the U.S. Army and was sent to Korea.Jonas, Gerald"Robert Sheckley, 77, Writer of Satirical Science Fiction, Is Dead" ''The New York ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lost Television Broadcast
Lost television broadcasts are mostly those early television programs which cannot be accounted for in studio archives (or in personal archives) usually because of deliberate destruction or neglect. Common reasons for loss A significant proportion of early television programming was never recorded in the first place. Early broadcasting in all genres was live and sometimes performed repeatedly. Due to there being no means to record the broadcast or, later, because the content itself was thought to have little monetary or historical value it was not deemed necessary to save it. In the United Kingdom, early programming was lost due to contractual demands by the actors' union to limit the rescreening of performances. Apart from Phonovision experiments by John Logie Baird, and some 280 rolls of 35mm film containing some of Paul Nipkow television station broadcasts, no recordings of transmissions from 1939 or earlier are known to exist. In 1947, Kinescopes (preserving the image on ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Novels First Published In Serial Form
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historica ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Works Originally Published In Galaxy Science Fiction
Works may refer to: People * Caddy Works (1896–1982), American college sports coach * Samuel Works (c. 1781–1868), New York politician Albums * '' ''Works'' (Pink Floyd album)'', a Pink Floyd album from 1983 * ''Works'', a Gary Burton album from 1972 * ''Works'', a Status Quo album from 1983 * ''Works'', a John Abercrombie album from 1991 * ''Works'', a Pat Metheny album from 1994 * ''Works'', an Alan Parson Project album from 2002 * ''Works Volume 1'', a 1977 Emerson, Lake & Palmer album * ''Works Volume 2'', a 1977 Emerson, Lake & Palmer album * '' The Works'', a 1984 Queen album Other uses * Microsoft Works Microsoft Works was a productivity software suite developed by Microsoft and sold from 1987 to 2009. Its core functionality included a word processor, a spreadsheet and a database management system. Later versions had a calendar application and ..., a collection of office productivity programs created by Microsoft * IBM Works, an office suite for the IBM OS/2 ope ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Novels By Robert Sheckley
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historica ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1959 Science Fiction Novels
Events January * January 1 - Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance. * January 2 - Lunar probe Luna 1 was the first man-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reached the vicinity of Earth's Moon, and was also the first spacecraft to be placed in heliocentric orbit. * January 3 ** The three southernmost atolls of the Maldive archipelago ( Addu Atoll, Huvadhu Atoll and Fuvahmulah island) declare independence. ** Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. state. * January 4 ** In Cuba, rebel troops led by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos enter the city of Havana. ** Léopoldville riots: At least 49 people are killed during clashes between the police and participants of a meeting of the ABAKO Party in Léopoldville in the Belgian Congo. * January 6 ** Fidel Castro arrives in Havana. ** The International Maritime Organization is inaugurated. * January 7 – The United States recognizes the new Cuban government of F ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1959 American Novels
Events January * January 1 - Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance. * January 2 - Lunar probe Luna 1 was the first man-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reached the vicinity of Earth's Moon, and was also the first spacecraft to be placed in heliocentric orbit. * January 3 ** The three southernmost atolls of the Maldive Islands, Maldive archipelago (Addu Atoll, Huvadhu Atoll and Fuvahmulah island) United Suvadive Republic, declare independence. ** Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. state. * January 4 ** In Cuba, rebel troops led by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos enter the city of Havana. ** Léopoldville riots: At least 49 people are killed during clashes between the police and participants of a meeting of the ABAKO Party in Kinshasa, Léopoldville in the Belgian Congo. * January 6 ** Fidel Castro arrives in Havana. ** The International Maritime Organization is inaugurated. * January 7 – The United States reco ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, movies/videos, moving images, and millions of books. In addition to its archiving function, the Archive is an activist organization, advocating a free and open Internet. , the Internet Archive holds over 35 million books and texts, 8.5 million movies, videos and TV shows, 894 thousand software programs, 14 million audio files, 4.4 million images, 2.4 million TV clips, 241 thousand concerts, and over 734 billion web pages in the Wayback Machine. The Internet Archive allows the public to upload and download digital material to its data cluster, but the bulk of its data is collected automatically by its web crawlers, which work to preserve as much of the public web as possible. Its web archiving, web archive, the Wayback Machine, contains hu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Futurama
''Futurama'' is an American animated science fiction sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series follows the adventures of the professional slacker Philip J. Fry, who is cryogenically preserved for 1000 years and revived on December 31, 2999. Fry finds work at an interplanetary delivery company, working alongside the one-eyed Leela and robot Bender. The series was envisioned by Groening in the mid-1990s while working on ''The Simpsons''; he brought David X. Cohen aboard to develop storylines and characters to pitch the show to Fox. Following its initial cancelation by Fox, ''Futurama'' began airing reruns on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block, which lasted from 2003 to 2007. It was revived in 2007 as four direct-to-video films, the last of which was released in early 2009. Comedy Central entered into an agreement with 20th Century Fox Television to syndicate the existing episodes and air the films as 16 new, half-hour episodes, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Space Pilot 3000
"Space Pilot 3000" is the pilot episode of the American animated television series ''Futurama''. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on March 28, 1999. The episode focuses on the cryogenic freezing of the series protagonist, Philip J. Fry, and the events when he awakens 1,000 years in the future. Series regulars are introduced and the futuristic setting, inspired by a variety of classic science fiction series from ''The Jetsons'' to ''Star Trek'', is revealed. It also sets the stage for many of the events to follow in the series, foreshadowing plot points from the third and fourth seasons. The episode was written by David X. Cohen and Matt Groening, and directed by Rich Moore and Gregg Vanzo. Dick Clark and Leonard Nimoy guest starred as themselves. The episode generally received good reviews with many reviewers noting that while the episode started slow, the series merited further viewing after ''The Simpsons'' and followed by ''Family Guy''. Plot On De ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Suicide Booth
A euthanasia device is a machine engineered to allow an individual to die quickly with minimal pain. The most common devices are those designed to help terminally ill people die by voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide without prolonged pain. They may be operated by a second party, such as a physician, or by the person wishing to die. There is an ongoing debate on the ethics of euthanasia and the use of euthanasia devices. Notable devices Thanatron Invented by Jack Kevorkian, who used this device and called it a "Thanatron" or death machine after the Greek daemon, Thanatos. It worked by pushing a button to deliver the euthanizing drugs mechanically through an IV. It had three canisters mounted on a metal frame. Each bottle had a syringe that connected to a single IV line in the person's arm. One contained saline, one contained a sleep-inducing barbiturate called sodium thiopental and the last a lethal mixture of potassium chloride, which immediately stopped the heart, and pa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Freejack
''Freejack'' is a 1992 American science fiction cyberpunk action film directed by Geoff Murphy and starring Emilio Estevez, Mick Jagger, Rene Russo, and Anthony Hopkins. The screenplay was written by Steven Pressfield, Ronald Shusett (who also produced), and Dan Gilroy and loosely adapted from the 1959 science fiction novel '' Immortality, Inc.'' by Robert Sheckley. The film was produced by Morgan Creek and released by Warner Bros. in the United States on January 17, 1992. It received mostly negative reviews. Plot In 2009, the super-wealthy achieve immortality by hiring "bonejackers", mercenaries equipped with time travel devices, to snatch people from the past, just prior to the moment of their deaths, for use as substitute bodies. Those who escape are known as "freejacks" and are considered less than human under the law. In this dystopian future, most people suffer from poor physical health as a result of rampant drug use and environmental pollution, making them unattractive a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |