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Methuselah's Children
''Methuselah's Children'' is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. Originally serialized in ''Astounding Science Fiction'' in the July, August, and September 1941 issues, it was expanded into a full-length novel in 1958. The novel is part of Heinlein's ''Future History'' series of stories. It introduces the Howard families, a fictional group of people who achieved long lifespans through selective breeding. According to John W. Campbell, the novel was originally to be called ''While the Evil Days Come Not'', a quotation from Ecclesiastes used as a password on the second page of the story. The novel was the origin of the term " masquerade", now used to refer to a fictional trope of a hidden society within the real world. Plot summary Starting off a grocer, Ira Howard became rich as a sutler wholesaler during the American Civil War, but died of old age at 48 or 49 years old. The trustees of his will carried out his wishes to prolong human life by financial ... [...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] |
Selective Breeding
Selective breeding (also called artificial selection) is the process by which humans use animal breeding and plant breeding to selectively develop particular phenotypic traits (characteristics) by choosing which typically animal or plant males and females will sexually reproduce and have offspring together. Domesticated animals are known as breeds, normally bred by a professional breeder, while domesticated plants are known as varieties, cultigens, cultivars, or breeds. Two purebred animals of different breeds produce a crossbreed, and crossbred plants are called hybrids. Flowers, vegetables and fruit-trees may be bred by amateurs and commercial or non-commercial professionals: major crops are usually the provenance of the professionals. In animal breeding, techniques such as inbreeding, linebreeding, and outcrossing are utilized. In plant breeding, similar methods are used. Charles Darwin discussed how selective breeding had been successful in producing change over time in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
''The Cat Who Walks Through Walls'' is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1985. Like many of his later novels, it features Lazarus Long and Jubal Harshaw as supporting characters. Plot summary A writer seated at the best restaurant of the space habitat "Golden Rule" is approached by a man who urges him that "Tolliver must die" and is himself shot before the writer's eyes. The writer—Colonel Colin Campbell, living under a number of aliases including his pen name "Richard Ames"—is joined by a beautiful and sophisticated lady, Gwendolyn Novak, who helps him flee to Luna with a bonsai maple and a would-be murderer ("Bill"). After escaping to the Moon, Gwen claims to have been present during the revolt described in ''The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress''. Still pursued by assassins, Campbell and Novak are rescued by an organization known as the Time Corps under the leadership of Lazarus Long. After giving Campbell a new foot to replace one lost i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Number Of The Beast (novel)
''The Number of the Beast'' is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1980. Excerpts from the novel were serialized in the magazine '' Omni'' (1979 October, November). Plot The book is a series of diary entries primarily by each of the four main characters: Zebadiah "Zeb" John Carter, programmer Dejah Thoris "Deety" Burroughs Carter, her mathematics professor father Jacob Burroughs, and off-campus socialite Hilda Corners. The names "Dejah Thoris", "Burroughs", and "Carter" are overt references to John Carter and Dejah Thoris, the protagonists of the Barsoom novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs. In the opening, Deety is dancing with Zeb at a party at Hilda's mansion. Deety is trying to get Zeb to meet her father to discuss what she thinks is an article Zeb wrote about n-dimensional space, even going so far as to offer herself. Zeb figures out and explains to Deety that he is not the one who wrote the article but a relative with a similar name. Aft ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Time Enough For Love
''Time Enough for Love'' is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, first published in 1973. The work was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1973 and both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1974. Plot The book covers several periods from the life of Lazarus Long (born Woodrow Wilson Smith), an early beneficiary of a breeding experiment designed to increase mankind's natural lifespan. The experiment is known as the Howard Families, after the program's initiator. Lazarus is the result of more a mutation than the breeding experiment, and he is the oldest living human at more than two thousand years old. The first half of the book takes the form of several novellas connected by Lazarus's retrospective narrative. In the framing story, Lazarus has decided that life is no longer worth living, but, in what is described as a reverse '' Arabian Nights'' scenario, agrees not to end his life for as long as his companion and descendant, chief executive of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Floyd C
Floyd may refer to: As a name * Floyd (given name), a list of people and fictional characters * Floyd (surname), a list of people and fictional characters Places in the United States * Floyd, Arkansas, an unincorporated community * Floyd, Iowa, a city in Floyd County * Floyd, Ray County, Missouri, an unincorporated community * Floyd, Washington County, Missouri, an unincorporated community * Floyd, New Mexico, a village * Floyd, New York, a town * Floyd, Texas, an unincorporated community * Floyd, Virginia, a town in Floyd County * Floyd County (other) * Floyd River, Iowa, a tributary of the Missouri River * Floyd Township (other) * Camp Floyd / Stagecoach Inn State Park and Museum, a short-lived U.S. Army post near Fairfield, Utah * Floyd's Bluff, a hill near Sioux City, Iowa Storms * Hurricane Floyd, major hurricane of 1999 * Tropical Storm Floyd (other), for other storms named Floyd Sports * Floyd (horse), a National Hunt racehorse * Fl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexei Panshin
Alexei Panshin (August 14, 1940 – August 21, 2022) was an American writer and science fiction critic. He wrote several critical works and several novels, including the 1968 Nebula Award–winning novel ''Rite of Passage''Nicholls 1979, p. 447. and, with his wife Cory Panshin, the 1990 Hugo Award–winning study of science fiction ''The World Beyond the Hill''. Personal life Panshin was born in Lansing, Michigan, on August 14, 1940. He died on August 21, 2022, at the age of 82.Alexei Panshin (1940–2022) by , at ; published August 21, 2022; retrieved August 21, 2022 ...
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Time Dilation
In physics and relativity, time dilation is the difference in the elapsed time as measured by two clocks. It is either due to a relative velocity between them ( special relativistic "kinetic" time dilation) or to a difference in gravitational potential between their locations ( general relativistic gravitational time dilation). When unspecified, "time dilation" usually refers to the effect due to velocity. After compensating for varying signal delays due to the changing distance between an observer and a moving clock (i.e. Doppler effect), the observer will measure the moving clock as ticking slower than a clock that is at rest in the observer's own reference frame. In addition, a clock that is close to a massive body (and which therefore is at lower gravitational potential) will record less elapsed time than a clock situated further from the said massive body (and which is at a higher gravitational potential). These predictions of the theory of relativity have been repeatedl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar System
The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar System" and "solar system" structures in theinaming guidelines document. The name is commonly rendered in lower case ('solar system'), as, for example, in the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' an''Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary''. is the gravity, gravitationally bound system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it. It Formation and evolution of the Solar System, formed 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a giant interstellar molecular cloud. The solar mass, vast majority (99.86%) of the system's mass is in the Sun, with most of the Jupiter mass, remaining mass contained in the planet Jupiter. The four inner Solar System, inner system planets—Mercury (planet), Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars—are terrest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Faster-than-light Drive
Faster-than-light (also FTL, superluminal or supercausal) travel and communication are the conjectural propagation of matter or information faster than the speed of light (). The special theory of relativity implies that only particles with zero rest mass (i.e., photons) may travel ''at'' the speed of light, and that nothing may travel faster. Particles whose speed exceeds that of light (tachyons) have been hypothesized, but their existence would violate causality and would imply time travel. The scientific consensus is that they do not exist. "Apparent" or "effective" FTL, on the other hand, depends on the hypothesis that unusually distorted regions of spacetime might permit matter to reach distant locations in less time than light could in normal ("undistorted") spacetime. As of the 21st century, according to current scientific theories, matter is required to travel at slower-than-light (also STL or subluminal) speed with respect to the locally distorted spacetime region. Appar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Group Mind (science Fiction)
A group mind, group ego, mind coalescence, or gestalt intelligence in science fiction is a plot device in which multiple minds, or consciousnesses, are linked into a single, collective consciousness or intelligence. The first alien hive society was depicted in H. G. Wells's ''The First Men in the Moon'' (1901) while the use of human hive minds in literature goes back at least as far as David H. Keller's ''The Human Termites'' (published in Wonder Stories in 1929) and Olaf Stapledon's science fiction novel ''Last and First Men'' (1930), which is the first known use of the term "group mind" in science fiction. The use of the phrase "hive mind", however, was first recorded in 1943 in use in bee keeping and its first known use in sci-fi was James H. Schmitz's ''Second Night of Summer'' (1950). A group mind might be formed by any fictional plot device that facilitates brain to brain communication, such as telepathy. This term may be used interchangeably with hive mind. "Hive mind" ten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Domestication
Domestication is a sustained multi-generational relationship in which humans assume a significant degree of control over the reproduction and care of another group of organisms to secure a more predictable supply of resources from that group. A broader biological definition is that it is a coevolutionary process that arises from a mutualism, in which one species (the domesticator) constructs an environment where it actively manages both the survival and reproduction of another species (the domesticate) in order to provide the former with resources and/or services. The domestication of plants and animals by humans was a major cultural innovation ranked in importance with the conquest of fire, the manufacturing of tools, and the development of verbal language. Charles Darwin recognized the small number of traits that made domestic species different from their wild ancestors. He was also the first to recognize the difference between conscious selective breeding (i.e. artificial se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
