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Neverness
''Neverness'' is a science fiction novel by American writer David Zindell, published in 1988. The related novelette "Shanidar" won the Writers of the Future contest in 1985. ''Neverness'' concerns a far-future world where interstellar travel is controlled by a group of mathematicians called pilots, because of their abilities to do the calculations needed for space travel, and posthuman or AI computer brains called "gods" rule much of the galaxy. It follows the deeds of Mallory Ringess, a young pilot, as he travels through the universe and discovers secrets and strangeness. He encounters a god, lives as a Neanderthal caveman, and eventually discovers that the lord of the pilots' order is thousands of years old and immortal, and that enlightened aliens have hidden profound secrets in humanity's genes. Zindell has said that it was partly based on Le Morte d'Arthur, with the pilots as "knights zipping around the universe in search of the Holy Grail". Mark Spencer praised the book fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Requiem For Homo Sapiens
''A Requiem for Homo Sapiens'' is a trilogy of science fiction novels by American writer David Zindell, made up of ''The Broken God'' (1992), ''The Wild'' (1995), and ''War in Heaven'' (1998). The trilogy is a sequel to the standalone novel ''Neverness'' (1988). The series has been described as containing "some of the most striking writing, vivid spectacles, memorable characters, and insightful presentations of philosophy and religion seen in SF for many a year." David Langford commented on similarities between the trilogy's hero Danlo and Paul Atreides, protagonist of Frank Herbert's ''Dune (novel), Dune''. Books ''The Broken God'' Set 10 years after the events of ''Neverness'', and narrated by its protagonist, Mallory Ringess, this book tells the story of the early life of his son, Danlo. After Danlo's tribe, the Devaki, is destroyed by a plague, he undertakes a perilous journey to Neverness City, where he is taken in and instructed by an alien Fravashi named "Old Father", j ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Zindell
David Zindell (born November 28, 1952) is an American writer known for science fiction and fantasy epics. Writing career Zindell's first published story was "The Dreamer's Sleep" in ''Fantasy Book'' in 1984. His novelette ''Shanidar'', which shared a background with his first novel '' Neverness'', won the Writers of the Future contest in 1985. He followed ''Neverness'' with a trilogy called '' A Requiem for Homo Sapiens'', which is a sequel. Zindell's fantasy series ''The Ea Cycle'' has as a theme the evolution of consciousness, through the method of fantasy. The plot concerns a prince named Valashu Elahad searching for a relic called the Lightstone to stop the immortal Morjin, Lord of Lies, who seeks to create a world filled with madness. In 2015 he published ''Splendor'', a nonfiction book, and in 2017 he published ''The Idiot Gods'', a novel told from the point of view of intelligent killer whales. Style and Themes John Clute wrote that Zindell was a "romantic, ambitious, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Religion In Science Fiction
Science fiction will sometimes address the topic of religion. Often religious themes are used to convey a broader message, but others confront the subject head-on—contemplating, for example, how attitudes towards faith might shift in the wake of ever-advancing technological progress, or offering creative scientific explanations for the apparently mystical events related in religious texts (gods as aliens, prophets as time travelers, etc.). As an exploratory medium, science fiction rarely takes religion at face value by simply accepting or rejecting it; when religious themes are presented, they tend to be investigated deeply. Some science fiction works portray invented religions, either placed into a contemporary Earth society (such as the Earthseed religion in Octavia Butler's '' Parable of the Sower''), or in the far future (as seen in '' Dune'' by Frank Herbert, with its Orange Catholic Bible). Other works examine the role of existing religions in a futuristic or alternat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Writers Of The Future
Writers of the Future (WOTF) is a science fiction and fantasy story contest that was established by L. Ron Hubbard in the early 1980s. A sister contest, Illustrators of the Future, presents awards for science fiction art. Hubbard characterized the contest as a way of "giving back" to the field that had defined his professional writing life. The contest has no entry fee and is the highest-paying contest for amateur science-fiction and fantasy writers. Notable past winners of WOTF include Stephen Baxter, Karen Joy Fowler, James Alan Gardner, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Jay Lake, Michael H. Payne, Patrick Rothfuss, Robert Reed, Dean Wesley Smith, Sean Williams, Dave Wolverton, Nancy Farmer, and David Zindell. Contest rules and procedures Writers of the Future The Writers of the Future (WOTF) contest may be entered quarterly, and is open to authors who have no, or few, professional publications. The contest rules state that entrants cannot have had published "a novel or short novel, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathematicians
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History One of the earliest known mathematicians were Thales of Miletus (c. 624–c.546 BC); he has been hailed as the first true mathematician and the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed. He is credited with the first use of deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to Thales' Theorem. The number of known mathematicians grew when Pythagoras of Samos (c. 582–c. 507 BC) established the Pythagorean School, whose doctrine it was that mathematics ruled the universe and whose motto was "All is number". It was the Pythagoreans who coined the term "mathematics", and with whom the study of mathematics for its own sake begins. The first woman mathematician recorded by history was Hypatia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Posthuman
Posthuman or post-human is a concept originating in the fields of science fiction, futurology, contemporary art, and philosophy that means a person or entity that exists in a state beyond being human. The concept aims at addressing a variety of questions, including ethics and justice, language and trans-species communication, social systems, and the intellectual aspirations of interdisciplinarity. Posthumanism is not to be confused with transhumanism (the biotechnological enhancement of human beings) and narrow definitions of the posthuman as the hoped-for transcendence of materiality. The notion of the posthuman comes up both in posthumanism as well as transhumanism, but it has a special meaning in each tradition. In 2017, Penn State University Press in cooperation with Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and James Hughes established the ''Journal of Posthuman Studies'', in which all aspects of the concept "posthuman" can be analysed. Posthumanism In critical theory, the posthuman is a sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neanderthal
Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. While the "causes of Neanderthal disappearance about 40,000 years ago remain highly contested," demographic factors such as small population size, inbreeding and genetic drift, are considered probable factors. Other scholars have proposed competitive replacement, assimilation into the modern human genome (bred into extinction), great climatic change, disease, or a combination of these factors. It is unclear when the line of Neanderthals split from that of modern humans; studies have produced various intervals ranging from 315,000 to more than 800,000 years ago. The date of divergence of Neanderthals from their ancestor ''H. heidelbergensis'' is also unclear. The oldest potential Neanderthal bones date to 430,000 years ago, but the classification ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Le Morte D'Arthur
' (originally written as '; inaccurate Middle French for "The Death of Arthur") is a 15th-century Middle English prose reworking by Sir Thomas Malory of tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table, along with their respective folklore. In order to tell a "complete" story of Arthur from his conception to his death, Malory compiled, rearranged, interpreted and modified material from various French and English sources. Today, this is one of the best-known works of Arthurian literature. Many authors since the 19th-century revival of the legend have used Malory as their principal source. Apparently written in prison at the end of the medieval English era, ''Le Morte d'Arthur'' was completed by Malory around 1470 and was first published in a printed edition in 1485 by William Caxton. Until the discovery of the Winchester Manuscript in 1934, the 1485 edition was considered the earliest known text of ''Le Morte d'Arthur'' and that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Astounding Award For Best New Writer
The ''Astounding'' Award for Best New Writer (formerly the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer) is given annually to the best new writer whose first professional work of science fiction or fantasy was published within the two previous calendar years. It is named after ''Astounding Science Fiction'' (now ''Analog Science Fiction and Fact''), a foundational science fiction magazine. The award is sponsored by Dell Magazines, which publishes ''Analog''. Between its founding in 1973 and 2019, the award was named after ''Astounding''s long-time editor John W. Campbell, one of the most influential figures in the early history of science fiction. In the aftermath of 2019 winner Jeannette Ng's acceptance speech, in which she described Campbell as a fascist, the science fiction fandom community discussed whether it was appropriate to continue honoring Campbell in this way; the editor of ''Analog'' subsequently announced that the award had been renamed. The nomination and selec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gene Wolfe
Gene Rodman Wolfe (May 7, 1931 – April 14, 2019) was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He was noted for his dense, allusive prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith. He was a prolific short story writer and novelist, and won many literary awards. Wolfe has been called "the Melville of science fiction", and was honored as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Wolfe is best known for his ''Book of the New Sun'' series (four volumes, 1980–1983), the first part of his "Solar Cycle". In 1998, ''Locus'' magazine ranked it the third-best fantasy novel published before 1990 based on a poll of subscribers that considered it and several other series as single entries. Personal life Wolfe was born in New York City, the son of Mary Olivia () and Emerson Leroy Wolfe. He had polio as a small child. He and his family moved to Houston when he was 6, and he went to high school and college in Texas, attending Lamar High School ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kim Stanley Robinson
Kim Stanley Robinson (born March 23, 1952) is an American writer of science fiction. He has published twenty-two novels and numerous short stories and is best known for his ''Mars'' trilogy. His work has been translated into 24 languages. Many of his novels and stories have ecological, cultural, and political themes and feature scientists as heroes. Robinson has won numerous awards, including the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the World Fantasy Award. Robinson's work has been labeled by ''The Atlantic'' as "the gold-standard of realistic, and highly literary, science-fiction writing." According to an article in ''The New Yorker'', Robinson is "generally acknowledged as one of the greatest living science-fiction writers." Early life and education Robinson was born in Waukegan, Illinois. He moved to Southern California as a child. In 1974, he earned a B.A. in literature from the University of California, San Diego. In 1975, he earned an M.A. in Eng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
