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Quicksilver (Novel)
''Quicksilver'' is a historical novel by Neal Stephenson, published in 2003. It is the first volume of ''The Baroque Cycle'', his late Baroque historical fiction series, succeeded by '' The Confusion'' and ''The System of the World'' (both published in 2004). ''Quicksilver'' won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was nominated for the Locus Award in 2004. Stephenson organized the structure of ''Quicksilver'' such that chapters have been incorporated into three internal books titled "Quicksilver", "The King of the Vagabonds", and "Odalisque". In 2006, each internal book was released in separate paperback editions, to make the 900 pages more approachable for readers. These internal books were originally independent novels within the greater cycle during composition. The novel ''Quicksilver'' is written in various narrative styles, such as theatrical staging and epistolary, and follows a large group of characters. Though mostly set in England, France, and the United Provinces in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neal Stephenson
Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, and baroque. Stephenson's work explores mathematics, cryptography, linguistics, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes non-fiction articles about technology in publications such as ''Wired (magazine), Wired''. He has written novels with his uncle, George Jewsbury ("J. Frederick George"), under the collective pseudonym Stephen Bury. Stephenson has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (founded by Jeff Bezos) developing a spacecraft and a space launch system, and is also a cofounder of Subutai Corporation, whose first offering is the interactive fiction project ''The Mongoliad''. He was Magic Leap's Chief Futurist from 2014 to 2020. Early life Born on October 31, 1959, in Fort George G. Meade, Fort Meade, Maryland, Stephenson ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cabal Ministry
The Cabal ministry or the CABAL refers to a group of high councillors of King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1668 to . The term ''Cabal'' has a double meaning in this context. It refers to the fact that, for perhaps the first time in English history, effective power in a royal council was shared by a group of men, a cabal, rather than dominated by a single "favourite". The term also serves as the acronym "C-A-B-A-L" for the names of the five Privy Councillors (Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale) who formed the council's Committee for Foreign Affairs. Through the Foreign Affairs committee and their own offices, the five members were able to direct government policy both at home and abroad. The notion of an organised group in government, as opposed to a single royal favourite holding clear power, was seen by many as a threat to the authority of the throne. Others saw it as subverting the power of the council or of Parliament, whilst Buckin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. He wrote works on philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, law, history and philology. Leibniz also made major contributions to physics and technology, and anticipated notions that surfaced much later in probability theory, biology, medicine, geology, psychology, linguistics and computer science. In addition, he contributed to the field of library science: while serving as overseer of the Wolfenbüttel library in Germany, he devised a cataloging system that would have served as a guide for many of Europe's largest libraries. Leibniz's contributions to this vast array of subjects were scattered in various learned journals, in tens of thousands of letters and in unpublished manuscripts. He wrote in several languages, pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Dyson (science Historian)
George Dyson (born 26 March 1953) is an American non-fiction author and historian of technology whose publications broadly cover the evolution of technology in relation to the physical environment and the direction of society. He has written on a wide range of topics, including the history of computing, the development of algorithms and intelligence, communications systems, space exploration, and the design of watercraft. Early life George Dyson is the son of the theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson and mathematician Verena Huber-Dyson, the brother of technology analyst Esther Dyson, and the grandson of the British composer Sir George Dyson. Dyson's early life is described in Kenneth Brower's book ''The Starship and the Canoe.'' When he was sixteen he went to live in British Columbia to pursue his interest in kayaking. From 1972 to 1975, he lived in a treehouse at a height of 30 metres that he built from salvaged materials on the shore of Burrard Inlet. Dyson became a Canad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cryptonomicon
''Cryptonomicon'' is a 1999 novel by American author Neal Stephenson, set in two different time periods. One group of characters are World War II-era Allied codebreakers and tactical-deception operatives affiliated with the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park (UK), and disillusioned Axis military and intelligence figures. The second narrative is set in the late 1990s, with characters that are (in part) descendants of those of the earlier time period, who employ cryptologic, telecom, and computer technology to build an underground data haven in the fictional Sultanate of Kinakuta. Their goal is to facilitate anonymous Internet banking using electronic money and (later) digital gold currency, with a long-term objective to distribute Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod (HEAP) media for instructing genocide-target populations on defensive warfare. Genre and subject matter ''Cryptonomicon'' is closer to the genres of historical fiction and contemporary tech ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fictional Universe
A fictional universe, or fictional world, is a self-consistent setting with events, and often other elements, that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed, or fictional realm (or world). Fictional universes may appear in novels, comics, films, television shows, video games, and other creative works. The subject is most commonly addressed in reference to fictional universes that differ markedly from the real world, such as those that introduce entire fictional cities, countries, or even planets, or those that contradict commonly known facts about the world and its history, or those that feature fantasy or science fiction concepts such as magic or faster than light travel—and especially those in which the deliberate development of the setting is a substantial focus of the work. When a large franchise of related works has two or more somewhat different fictional universes that are each internally consistent but not consistent with each oth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harem
Harem ( Persian: حرمسرا ''haramsarā'', ar, حَرِيمٌ ''ḥarīm'', "a sacred inviolable place; harem; female members of the family") refers to domestic spaces that are reserved for the women of the house in a Muslim family. A harem may house a man's wife or wives, their pre-pubescent male children, unmarried daughters, female domestic servants, and other unmarried female relatives. In harems of the past, slave concubines were also housed in the harem. In former times some harems were guarded by eunuchs who were allowed inside. The structure of the harem and the extent of monogamy or polygamy has varied depending on the family's personalities, socio-economic status, and local customs. Similar institutions have been common in other Mediterranean and Middle Eastern civilizations, especially among royal and upper-class families, and the term is sometimes used in other contexts. In traditional Persian residential architecture the women's quarters were known as '' anda ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) // CITED: p. 36 (PDF p. 38/338) also known as the Turkish Empire, was an empire that controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa, Northern Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. It was founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt (modern-day Bilecik Province) by the Turkoman (ethnonym), Turkoman tribal leader Osman I. After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe and, with the Ottoman wars in Europe, conquest of the Balkans, the Ottoman Anatolian beyliks, beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the Fall of Constantinople, conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed the Conqueror. Under the reign of Sule ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vagabond (person)
Vagrancy is the condition of homelessness without regular employment or income. Vagrants (also known as bums, vagabonds, rogues, tramps or drifters) usually live in poverty and support themselves by begging, scavenging, petty theft, temporary work, or social security (where available). Historically, vagrancy in Western societies was associated with petty crime, begging and lawlessness, and punishable by law with forced labor, military service, imprisonment, or confinement to dedicated labor houses. Both ''vagrant'' and ''vagabond'' ultimately derive from the Latin word '' vagari'', meaning "to wander". The term ''vagabond'' is derived from Latin ''vagabundus''. In Middle English, ''vagabond'' originally denoted a person without a home or employment. Historical views Vagrants have been historically characterised as outsiders in settled, ordered communities: embodiments of otherness, objects of scorn or mistrust, or worthy recipients of help and charity. Some ancient s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a " natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the greatest mathematicians and physicists and among the most influential scientists of all time. He was a key figure in the philosophical revolution known as the Enlightenment. His book (''Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy''), first published in 1687, established classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing infinitesimal calculus. In the , Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint for centuries until it was superseded by the theory of relativity. Newton used his mathematical description of gravity to derive Kepler's laws of planetary motion, accoun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natural Philosophy
Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin ''philosophia naturalis'') is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe. It was dominant before the development of modern science. From the ancient world (at least since Aristotle) until the 19th century, ''natural philosophy'' was the common term for the study of physics (nature), a broad term that included botany, zoology, anthropology, and chemistry as well as what we now call physics. It was in the 19th century that the concept of science received its modern shape, with different subjects within science emerging, such as astronomy, biology, and physics. Institutions and communities devoted to science were founded. Isaac Newton's book ''Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica'' (1687) (English: ''Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy'') reflects the use of the term ''natural philosophy'' in the 17th century. Even in the 19th century, the work that helped define much of mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cryptography
Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adversarial behavior. More generally, cryptography is about constructing and analyzing protocols that prevent third parties or the public from reading private messages. Modern cryptography exists at the intersection of the disciplines of mathematics, computer science, information security, electrical engineering, digital signal processing, physics, and others. Core concepts related to information security (data confidentiality, data integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation) are also central to cryptography. Practical applications of cryptography include electronic commerce, chip-based payment cards, digital currencies, computer passwords, and military communications. Cryptography prior to the modern age was effectively synony ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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