|
Raygun
A raygun is a science-fiction directed-energy weapon usually with destructive effect.Jeff Prucher, '' Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction,'' Oxford University Press, 2007, page 162 They have various names: ray gun, death ray, beam gun, blaster, laser gun, laser pistol, phaser, zap gun, etc. In most stories a raygun emits a ray usually lethal if it hits a human target, often destructive if it hits mechanical objects, with properties and other effects unspecified or varying. Real-world analogues are directed-energy weapons or electrolasers: electroshock weapons which send current along an electrically conductive laser-induced plasma channel. History A very early example of a raygun is the Heat-Ray featured in H. G. Wells' novel '' The War of the Worlds'' (1898).Van Riper, op. cit., p. 46. Science fiction during the 1920s described death rays. Early science fiction often described or depicted raygun beams making bright light and loud noise like ligh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buck Rogers
Buck Rogers is a science fiction adventure hero and feature comic strip created by Philip Francis Nowlan first appearing in daily American newspapers on January 7, 1929, and subsequently appearing in Sunday newspapers, international newspapers, books and multiple media with adaptations including radio in 1932, Buck Rogers (serial), a serial film, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (TV series), a television series, and other formats. The ''Buck Rogers'' strip, published 1929–1967 and syndicated by John F. Dille Co. (later called the National Newspaper Syndicate), was popular enough to inspire other newspaper syndicates to launch their own science fiction strips.Ron Goulart, "The 30s -- Boomtime for SF Heroes". ''Starlog'', January 1981 (pp. 31–35). The most famous of these imitators was ''Flash Gordon'' (King Features Syndicate, 1934–2003); others included ''Brick Bradford'' (Central Press Association, 1933–1987), ''Carl Pfeufer, Don Dixon and the Hidden Empire'' (Watkins Synd ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phaser (fictional Weapon)
The ''Star Trek'' Setting (fiction), fictional universe contains a variety of weapons, ranging from missiles (photon torpedoes) to melee (primarily used by the Klingons, a race of Extraterrestrial life in fiction, aliens in the ''Star Trek'' universe). The ''Star Trek'' franchise consists mainly of several multi-season television shows and fourteen movies, as well as various video games and merchandise. Many aspects of the ''Star Trek'' universe impact modern popular culture, especially its fictitious terminology and the concept of weaponry on spacecraft. The franchise has had a widespread influence on its audiences from the late 20th to early 21st century. Notably, ''Star Trek'''s science fiction concepts have been studied by real scientists; NASA described it in relation to the real world as "entertaining combination of real science, imaginary science gathered from lots of earlier stories, and stuff the writers make up week-by-week to give each new episode novelty." For exam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Death Ray
The death ray or death beam is a theoretical particle beam or electromagnetic weapon first theorized around the 1920s and 1930s. Around that time, notable inventors such as Guglielmo Marconi, Nikola Tesla, Harry Grindell Matthews, Edwin R. Scott, Erich Graichen and others claimed to have invented it independently. In 1957, the National Inventors Council was still issuing lists of needed military inventions that included a death ray. While based in fiction, research into energy-based weapons inspired by past speculation has contributed to real-life weapons in use by modern militaries sometimes called a sort of "death ray", such as the United States Navy and its Laser Weapon System (LaWS) deployed in mid-2014. Such armaments are technically known as directed-energy weapons. History In 1923, Edwin R. Scott, an inventor from San Francisco, claimed he was the first to develop a death ray that would destroy human life and bring down planes at a distance. He was born in Detroit, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flash Gordon
Flash Gordon is the protagonist of a space adventure comic strip created and originally drawn by Alex Raymond. First published January 7, 1934, the strip was inspired by, and created to compete with, the already established ''Buck Rogers'' adventure strip. Creation The ''Buck Rogers'' comic strip had been commercially very successful, spawning novelizations and children's toys, and King Features Syndicate decided to create its own science-fiction comic strip to compete with it. At first, King Features tried to purchase the rights to the '' John Carter of Mars'' stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs, but the syndicate was unable to reach an agreement with Burroughs. King Features then turned to Alex Raymond, one of their staff artists, to create the story. One source for Flash Gordon was the Philip Wylie novel '' When Worlds Collide'' (1933). The book's themes of an approaching planet threatening the Earth, and an athletic hero, his girlfriend, and a scientist traveling to the ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greenwood Press
Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. (GPG) was an educational and academic publisher (middle school through university level) which was part of ABC-Clio. Since 2021, ABC-Clio and its suite of imprints, including GPG, are collectively imprints of British publishing house Bloomsbury Publishing. The Greenwood name stopped being used for new books in 2023. Established in 1967 as Greenwood Press, Inc., and based in Westport, Connecticut, GPG published reference works under its Greenwood Press imprint; and scholarly, professional, and general-interest books under its related imprint, Praeger Publishers (). Also part of GPG was Libraries Unlimited, which published professional works for librarians and teachers. Both of the latter became stand-alone imprints of ABC-Clio, in 2008–2009, after its purchase of GPG. History 1967–1999 The company was founded as Greenwood Press, Inc. (GPI) in 1967 by Harold Mason, a librarian and antiquarian bookseller, and Harold Schwartz, who had a backg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Original Series)
''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of the archaic pronoun ''thee' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pilot Episode
A television pilot (also known as a pilot or a pilot episode and sometimes marketed as a tele-movie) in United Kingdom and United States television, is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell a show to a television network or other distributor. A pilot is created to be a testing ground to gauge whether a series will be successful. It is, therefore, a test episode for the intended television series, an early step in the series development, much like pilot studies serve as precursors to the start of larger activity. A successful pilot may be used as the series premiere, the first aired episode of a new show, but sometimes a series' pilot may be aired as a later episode or never aired at all. Some series are commissioned straight-to-series without a pilot (although an increasing number of such series have their first episodes titled "Pilot"). On some occasions, pilots that were not ordered to series may also be broadcast as a standalone television film or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Original Series
''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry that follows the adventures of the starship and its crew. It acquired the retronym of ''Star Trek: The Original Series'' (''TOS'' to distinguish the show within the media franchise that it began. The show is set in the Milky Way galaxy, 2266–2269. The ship and crew are led by Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), First Officer and Science Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Chief Medical Officer Leonard H. "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley). Shatner's voice-over introduction during each episode's opening credits stated the starship's purpose: Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship ''Enterprise''. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. Norway Productions and Desilu Productions produced the series from September 1966 to December 1967. Paramount Television p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
