HOME
*





Limits (collection)
''Limits'' is a collection of short stories and essays by science fiction author Larry Niven, originally published in 1985. * "The Lion in his Attic" - Seventy-six years after Atlantis drowned, a sorceress and a prince learn to their dismay that not all lions eat red meat. * "Spirals" * "A Teardrop Falls" - In his youth, Hilary Gage had fought men and studied the ravages of Berserkers. As a machine, he terraformed Terraforming or terraformation ("Earth-shaping") is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying the atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology of a planet, moon, or other body to be similar to the environment of Earth to make ... planets and lay in wait . . . . * "Talisman" * "Flare Time" * "The Locusts" * "Yet Another Modest Proposal" At last, a solution to the problem of radioactive wastes that costs nothing and yields an immodest profit. * "More Tales from Draco Tavern" * "Limits" - Two aliens fascinated by man's fondness for defining boundari ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Short Story
A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest types of literature and has existed in the form of legends, mythic tales, folk tales, fairy tales, tall tales, fables and anecdotes in various ancient communities around the world. The modern short story developed in the early 19th century. Definition The short story is a crafted form in its own right. Short stories make use of plot, resonance, and other dynamic components as in a novel, but typically to a lesser degree. While the short story is largely distinct from the novel or novella/short novel, authors generally draw from a common pool of literary techniques. The short story is sometimes referred to as a genre. Determining what exactly defines a short story has been recurrently problematic. A classic definition of a short story ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

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]  


picture info

Larry Niven
Laurence van Cott Niven (; born April 30, 1938) is an American science fiction writer. His best-known works are ''Ringworld'' (1970), which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards, and, with Jerry Pournelle, ''The Mote in God's Eye'' (1974) and ''Lucifer's Hammer'' (1977). The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him the 2015 recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics. It also often includes elements of detective fiction and adventure stories. His fantasy includes the series ''The Magic Goes Away'', rational fantasy dealing with magic as a non-renewable resource. Biography Niven was born in Los Angeles. He is a great-grandson of Edward L. Doheny, an oil tycoon who drilled the first successful well in the Los Angeles City Oil Field in 1892, and also was subsequently implicated in the Teapot Dome scandal. Niven briefly attended the Califor ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Draco Tavern
''The Draco Tavern'' is a 2006 collection of science fiction short stories by American writer Larry Niven concerning the activities of Rick Schumann, the bartender of the Draco Tavern. Fictional background story The Draco tavern is located in Siberia, near the Mount Forel spaceport. The tavern was created after a race of sentient aliens called Chirpsithra landed on Earth. The Chirpsithra stand 11 feet tall with salmon-pink exoskeletons. All of them appear to be female. They enjoy mild electric currents, whose effect on them is similar to that of alcohol on humans. They originated on tidally locked planets around red dwarf ''Red Dwarf'' is a British science fiction comedy franchise created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, which primarily consists of a television sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999, and on Dave since 2009, gaining a cult following. T ... suns. Eventually, they had control over every single red dwarf sun in the galaxy, or so they claim. They ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Berserker (Saberhagen)
The Berserker series is a series of space opera science fiction short stories and novels by Fred Saberhagen, in which robotic self-replicating machines strive to destroy all life. These Berserkers, named after the human berserker warriors of Norse mythology, Norse legend, are doomsday weapons left over from an interstellar war between two races of Extraterrestrial life, extraterrestrials. They all have machine intelligence, and their sizes range from that of an asteroid, in the case of an automated repair and construction base, down to human size (and shape) or smaller. The Berserkers' bases are capable of manufacturing more and deadlier Berserkers as the need arises. The Berserker hypothesis, formed as a possible solution to the Fermi paradox, takes its name from the series. The ''Berserker'' stories (published as novels and short story, short stories) depict the fight between Berserkers and the sophont, sentient species of the Milky Way Galaxy: ''Human, Homo sapiens'' (referred ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Fred Saberhagen
Fred Thomas Saberhagen (May 18, 1930 – June 29, 2007) was an American science fiction and fantasy author most famous for his ''Berserker'' series of science fiction short stories and novels. Saberhagen also wrote a series of vampire novels in which the famous Dracula is the main protagonist, and a series of post-apocalyptic mytho-magical novels beginning with his popular Empire of the East series and continuing through a long series of ''Swords'' and ''Lost Swords'' novels. Saberhagen died of cancer, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Biography Saberhagen was born in and grew up in the area of Chicago, Illinois. Saberhagen served as an enlisted man in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War while he was in his early twenties. Back in civilian life, Saberhagen worked as an electronics technician for the Motorola Corporation from 1958 to 1962, when he was around 30 years old. It was while he was working for Motorola that Saberhagen started writing fiction seriously at the age of abou ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Atlantis
Atlantis ( grc, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, , island of Atlas (mythology), Atlas) is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works ''Timaeus (dialogue), Timaeus'' and ''Critias (dialogue), Critias'', wherein it represents the antagonist naval power that besieges "Ancient Athens", the Counterfactual history, pseudo-historic embodiment of Plato's ideal state in ''The Republic (Plato), The Republic''. In the story, Athens repels the Atlantean attack unlike any other nation of the Ecumene, known world, supposedly bearing witness to the superiority of Plato's concept of a state. The story concludes with Atlantis falling out of favor with the deities and submerging into the Atlantic Ocean. Despite its minor importance in Plato's work, the Atlantis story has had a considerable impact on literature. The allegorical aspect of Atlantis was taken up in utopian works of several Renaissance writers, such as Francis Bacon's ''New Atlantis'' and Th ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Terraforming
Terraforming or terraformation ("Earth-shaping") is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying the atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology of a planet, moon, or other body to be similar to the environment of Earth to make it habitable for humans to live on. The concept of terraforming developed from both science fiction and actual science. Carl Sagan, an astronomer, proposed the planetary engineering of Venus in 1961, which is considered one of the first accounts of the concept. The term was coined by Jack Williamson in a science-fiction short story ("Collision Orbit") published in 1942 in '' Astounding Science Fiction'', although terraforming in popular culture may predate this work. Even if the environment of a planet could be altered deliberately, the feasibility of creating an unconstrained planetary environment that mimics Earth on another planet has yet to be verified. While Venus, Earth, Mars, and even the Moon have been studied in relation to the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Radioactive Waste
Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons reprocessing. The storage and disposal of radioactive waste is regulated by government agencies in order to protect human health and the environment. Radioactive waste is broadly classified into low-level waste (LLW), such as paper, rags, tools, clothing, which contain small amounts of mostly short-lived radioactivity, intermediate-level waste (ILW), which contains higher amounts of radioactivity and requires some shielding, and high-level waste (HLW), which is highly radioactive and hot due to decay heat, so requires cooling and shielding. In nuclear reprocessing plants about 96% of spent nuclear fuel is recycled back into uranium-based and mixed-oxide (MOX) fuels. The residual 4% is minor actinides and fission products the latter of w ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

1985 Short Story Collections
The year 1985 was designated as the International Youth Year by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 ** The Internet's Domain Name System is created. ** Greenland withdraws from the European Economic Community as a result of a new agreement on fishing rights. * January 7 – Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launches ''Sakigake'', Japan's first interplanetary spacecraft and the first deep space probe to be launched by any country other than the United States space exploration programs, United States or the Soviet space program, Soviet Union. * January 15 – Tancredo Neves is Brazilian presidential election, 1985, elected president of Brazil by the National Congress of Brazil, Congress, ending the Military dictatorship in Brazil, 21-year military rule. * January 20 – Ronald Reagan is Second inauguration of Ronald Reagan, privately sworn in for a second term as Presidency of Ronald Reagan, President of the United States. * January 27 – The Eco ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Short Story Collections By Larry Niven
Short may refer to: Places * Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon * Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community * Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place People * Short (surname) * List of people known as the Short Arts, entertainment, and media * Short film, a cinema format (also called film short or short subject) * Short story, prose generally readable in one sitting * ''The Short-Timers'', a 1979 semi-autobiographical novel by Gustav Hasford, about military short-timers in Vietnam Brands and enterprises * Short Brothers, a British aerospace company * Short Brothers of Sunderland, former English shipbuilder Computing and technology * Short circuit, an accidental connection between two nodes of an electrical circuit * Short integer, a computer datatype Finance * Short (finance), stock-trading position * Short snorter, a banknote signed by fellow travelers, common during World War II Foodstuffs * Short pastry, one which is rich in butte ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]