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International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day
International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day is a commemoration declared by author Jo Walton, held on April 23 and first celebrated in 2007, in response to remarks made by Howard V. Hendrix stating that he was opposed "to the increasing presence in our organization the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America of webscabs, who post their creations on the net for free". The purpose of the day, according to Walton, was to encourage writers to post "professional quality" works for free on the internet. The name of the day originates from the assertion by Hendrix that the " webscabs" are "converting the noble calling of Writer into the life of Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch." Many notable authors contributed to International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day 2007, including Chaz Brenchley, Steven Brust, Emma Bull, Debra Doyle, Diane Duane, Naomi Kritzer, Jay Lake, David Langford, Sharon Lee, Beth Meacham, Steve Miller, Andrew Plotkin, Robert Reed, Will Shetterly, She ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jo Walton
Jo Walton (born 1964) is a Welsh and Canadian fantasy and science fiction writer and poet. She is best known for the fantasy novel ''Among Others'', which won the Hugo Award, Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2012, and ''Tooth and Claw (novel), Tooth and Claw'', a Victorian era novel with dragons which won the World Fantasy Award in 2004. Other works by Walton include the ''Small Change'' series, in which she blends alternate history with the cozy mystery genre, comprising ''Farthing (novel), Farthing'', ''Ha'penny (novel), Ha'penny'' and ''Half a Crown (novel), Half a Crown''. Her fantasy novel ''Lifelode'' won the 2010 Mythopoeic Award, and her alternate history ''My Real Children'' received the 2015 Tiptree Award. Walton is also known for her non-fiction, including book reviews and SF commentary in the magazine ''Tor.com''. A collection of her articles were published in ''What Makes This Book So Great'' (2014), which won the Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction. Background Walton w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrew Plotkin
Andrew Plotkin (born May 15, 1970), also known as Zarf, is a central figure in the modern interactive fiction (IF) community. Having both written a number of award-winning games and developed a range of new file formats, interpreters, and other utilities for the design, production, and running of IF games, Plotkin is widely recognised for both his creative and his technical contributions to the homebrew IF scene. Interactive fiction Plotkin was one of the earliest writers to use Graham Nelson's Inform development system, and one of the first since Infocom's heyday to explore the boundaries of interactive fiction as an artistic medium. Many later authors cite him as a primary influence. He has won many awards within the community, and is frequently interviewed for magazine articles about interactive fiction. Plotkin has also made major technical contributions to the interactive fiction medium, designing the Blorb archive format, the Glk I/O platform, and the Glulx virtual mach ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
April Observances
April is the fourth month of the year in the Gregorian calendar, Gregorian and Julian calendar, Julian calendars. It is the first of four months to have a length of 30 days, and the second of five months to have a length of less than 31 days. April is commonly associated with the season of autumn in parts of the Southern Hemisphere, and Spring (season), spring in parts of the Northern Hemisphere, where it is the seasonal equivalent to October in the Southern Hemisphere and vice versa. History The Romans gave this month the Latin name ''Aprilis''"April" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes Ltd, George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 1, p. 497. but the derivation of this name is uncertain. The traditional etymology is from the verb ''aperire'', "to open", in allusion to its being the season when trees and flowers begin to "open", which is supported by comparison with the modern Greek use of wikt:άνοιξη#Greek, άνοιξη (''ánixi'') (opening) for spri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science Fiction Literature
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 bec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science Fiction Organizations
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for scientific reasoning is tens of thousands of years old. The earliest written records in the history of science come from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but was preserved in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age and later by the efforts of Byzantine Greek scholars who brought Greek ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sean Williams (author)
Sean Llewellyn Williams (born 23 May 1967) is an Australian author of science fiction who lives in Adelaide, South Australia. Several of his books have been ''New York Times'' best-sellers. Early life and education Williams was born in Whyalla, South Australia on 23 May 1967. He studied sciences and music at Pulteney Grammar School and matriculated third in his year (1984), topping the state for Musical composition. That same year, he won the Young Composer's Award for a theme and three variations for string quartet with flute, oboe and trumpet soloists called "Release of Anger". He then went to Adelaide University and studied a Bachelor of Economics and wrote for the student newspaper ''On Dit''. He completed a Master of Arts in Creative Writing at Adelaide University in 2005 and was in 2010 a PhD candidate at the same institution. Writing career He is the author of over eighty published short stories and thirty-nine novels, including ''Twinmaker'' and (with Garth Nix) th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martha Wells
Martha Wells (born September 1, 1964) is an American writer of speculative fiction. She has published a number of fantasy novels, young adult novels, media tie-ins, short stories, and nonfiction essays on fantasy and science fiction subjects. Her novels have been translated into twelve languages. Wells has won four Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards and three Locus Awards for her science fiction series ''The Murderbot Diaries''. She is also known for her fantasy series '' Ile-Rien'' and ''The Books of the Raksura.'' Wells is praised for the complex, realistically detailed societies she creates; this is often credited to her academic background in anthropology. Life Martha Wells was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and has a B.A. in Anthropology from Texas A&M University. She lives in College Station, Texas, with her husband. She was involved in SF/F fandom in college and was chairman of AggieCon 17. Career As an aspiring writer Wells attended many local writing workshops and conventions, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Lawrence Watt-Evans (born 1954) is one of the pseudonyms of American science fiction and fantasy author Lawrence Watt Evans (another pseudonym, used primarily for science fiction, is Nathan Archer). Biography Born in Arlington, Massachusetts, as the fourth of six children, he made his first attempts at professional writing when he was eight. After graduating from Bedford High School in Bedford, Massachusetts, he attended Princeton University but left without a degree. By the rules of Princeton, he could not reapply for a year, during which he began to seriously try to sell his writing, but he sold nothing significant until ''The Lure of the Basilisk'' in 1979 (published 1980); he began then writing full-time. Despite having sold a short story and several articles under his real name, he initially submitted his first novel under a pseudonym. It was the editor of that novel, Lester del Rey, who first demanded for him to use his real name, and del Rey added the hyphen to create th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catherynne M
Catherynne M. Valente (born May 5, 1979) is an American fiction writer, poet, and literary critic. For her speculative fiction novels she has won the annual James Tiptree, Andre Norton, and Mythopoeic Fantasy awards. Her short fiction has appeared in ''Clarkesworld Magazine'', the World Fantasy Award–winning anthologies '' Salon Fantastique'' and ''Paper Cities'', along with numerous "Year's Best" volumes. Her critical work has appeared in the ''International Journal of the Humanities'' as well as in numerous essay collections. Career Catherynne M. Valente's novels have been nominated for Hugo, World Fantasy, and Locus awards. Her 2009 book ''Palimpsest'' won the Lambda Award for LGBT Science Fiction or Fantasy. Her two-volume series '' The Orphan's Tales'' won the 2008 Mythopoeic Award, and its first volume, ''The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden'', won the 2006 James Tiptree Jr. Award and was nominated for the 2007 World Fantasy Award. In 2012, Valente's work won t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Stross
Charles David George "Charlie" Stross (born 18 October 1964) is a British writer of science fiction and fantasy. Stross specialises in hard science fiction and space opera. Between 1994 and 2004, he was also an active writer for the magazine '' Computer Shopper'' and was responsible for its monthly Linux column. He stopped writing for the magazine to devote more time to novels. However, he continues to publish freelance articles on the Internet. Early life and education Stross was born in Leeds, England. He showed an early interest in writing and wrote his first science fiction story at age 12. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in Pharmacy in 1986 and qualified as a pharmacist in 1987. In 1989, he enrolled at Bradford University for a post-graduate degree in computer science. In 1990, he went to work as a technical author and programmer. In 2000, he began working as a writer full-time, as a technical writer at first, but then became successful as a fiction writer. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ryk Spoor
Ryk E. Spoor is an American science fiction and fantasy author, who also writes research grant proposals for a technology firm. He published his first novel, ''Digital Knight'' in 2003, and has gone on to publish over a dozen more novels, often in collaboration with author Eric Flint on their ''Boundary'' series. He is nicknamed "seawasp" or "Sea Wasp", an online handle he has been using since 1977 in venues such as Livejournal, Dreamwidth and Usenet. Reception of his published works ''Digital Knight'' (2003) reached number 10 on Locus Magazine Bestsellers for paperbacks for the month of January 2004. A reviewer for the ''Shiny Book Review'' called Spoor's first published work "fun, fast read about things that go bump in the night" and "a fine debut novel that does just about everything right". In reviewing the novel ''Grand Central Arena'', the reviewer for the ''Shiny Book Review'' called the book "an intelligently written space opera with a great deal to recommend it" bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sherwood Smith
Sherwood Smith (born 1951) is an American fantasy and science fiction writer for young adult literature, young adults and adults. Smith is a Nebula Award finalist and a longtime writing group organizer and participant. Smith's works include the YA novel ''Crown Duel''. Smith also collaborated with Dave Trowbridge in writing the ''Exordium (book series), Exordium'' series and with Andre Norton in writing two of the books in the ''Solar Queen'' universe. In 2001, her short story "Mom and Dad at the Home Front" was a finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story. Smith's children's books have made it on many library Best Books lists. Her ''Wren's War'' was an Anne Spencer Lindbergh Honor Book, and it and ''The Spy Princess'' were Mythopoeic Awards, Mythopoeic Fantasy Award finalists. Biography Sherwood Smith was born May 28, 1951, in Glendale, California. On her website, Smith describes herself as a middle-aged woman who has been married for over thirty years. Besides writi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
