Special Delivery (short Story)
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Special Delivery (short Story)
"Special Delivery" is a science fiction short story by American writer Damon Knight. It first appeared in the April 1954 issue of ''Galaxy Science Fiction'' and has been reprinted a number of times, in ''Operation Future'' (1955), '' Far Out'' (1961), and ''The Best of Damon Knight'' (1976). Synopsis Len and Moira Connington are expecting a baby; Len teaches high-school chemistry and hopes for a promotion. Moira begins to act strangely; it seems as if someone else, a child, is sometimes speaking through her mouth, and she develops aversions to alcohol and coffee. Eventually they realize that the unborn baby, Leo (who named himself for Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...), is communicating with and through the mother. Leo's intellect develops quic ...
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Damon Knight
Damon Francis Knight (September 19, 1922 – April 15, 2002) was an American science fiction author, editor, and critic. He is the author of "To Serve Man", a 1950 short story adapted for ''The Twilight Zone''.Stanyard, ''Dimensions Behind the Twilight Zone'', p. 51. He was married to fellow writer Kate Wilhelm. Biography Knight was born in Baker City, Oregon in 1922, and grew up in Hood River, Oregon. He entered science-fiction fandom at the age of eleven and published two issues of a fanzine titled ''Snide''. Knight's first professional sale was a cartoon drawing to a science-fiction magazine, ''Amazing Stories''.Knight, "Knight Piece," Brian W. Aldiss & Harry Harrison, ''Hell's Cartographers'', Orbit Books, 1976, p. 105. His first story, "The Itching Hour", appeared in the Summer 1940 number of ''Futuria Fantasia'', edited and published by Ray Bradbury. "Resilience" followed in the February 1941 number of ''Stirring Science Stories'', edited by Donald A. Wollh ...
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Paperback
A paperback (softcover, softback) book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with adhesive, glue rather than stitch (textile arts), stitches or Staple (fastener), staples. In contrast, hardcover (hardback) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, leather, paper, or plastic. Inexpensive books bound in paper have existed since at least the 19th century in such forms as pamphlets, yellow-backs, yellowbacks, dime novels, and airport novels. Modern paperbacks can be differentiated from one another by size. In the United States, there are "mass-market paperbacks" and larger, more durable "trade paperbacks". In the United Kingdom, there are A-format, B-format, and the largest C-format sizes. Paperback editions of books are issued when a publisher decides to release a book in a low-cost format. Lower-quality paper, glued (rather than stapled or sewn) bindings, and the lack of a hard cover may contribute to the lower cost of paperbacks. Paperb ...
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Science Fiction Short Stories
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for scientific reasoning is tens of thousands of years old. The earliest written records in the history of science come from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but was preserved in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age and later by the efforts of Byzantine Greek scholars who brought Greek man ...
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1954 Short Stories
Events January * January 1 – The Soviet Union ceases to demand war reparations from West Germany. * January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting. * January 7 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York, at the head office of IBM. * January 10 – BOAC Flight 781, a de Havilland Comet jet plane, disintegrates in mid-air due to metal fatigue, and crashes in the Mediterranean near Elba; all 35 people on board are killed. * January 12 – Avalanches in Austria kill more than 200. * January 15 – Mau Mau leader Waruhiu Itote is captured in Kenya. * January 17 – In Yugoslavia, Milovan Đilas, one of the leading members of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, is relieved of his duties. * January 20 – The US-based National Negro Network is established, with 46 member radio stations. * January 21 – The first nuclear-powered subm ...
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Leonardo Da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he also became known for #Journals and notes, his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomized the Renaissance humanism, Renaissance humanist ideal, and his List of works by Leonardo da Vinci, collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary, Michelangelo. Born Legitimacy (family law), out of wedlock to a successful Civil law notary, notary and a lower-class woman in, or near, Vinci, Tuscany, Vinci, he was educated in Florence by the Italian painter and sculptor ...
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Far Out (book)
''Far Out'' is a collection of 13 science fiction short stories by American writer Damon Knight. The stories were originally published between 1949 and 1960 in ''Galaxy Magazine'', ''If (magazine), If Science Fiction'' and other science fiction magazines. There is an introduction by Anthony Boucher. The book contains the story "To Serve Man", which was later adapted for television. Contents * Introduction * "To Serve Man" * "Idiot Stick" * "Thing of Beauty (short story), Thing of Beauty" * "The Enemy (short story), The Enemy" * "Not with a Bang (short story), Not with a Bang" * "Babel II (short story), Babel II" * "Anachron" * "Special Delivery (short story), Special Delivery" * "You're Another" * "Time Enough" * "Extempore" * "Cabin Boy (short story), Cabin Boy" * "The Last Word (Knight short story), The Last Word" External links * Damon Knight, Knight, Damon (1961), Far Out
', Simon & Schuster, New York 1961 short story collections Science fiction short story collections W ...
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Operation Future
''Operation Future'' is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Groff Conklin. It was first published in paperback by Permabooks in July 1955 and reprinted in September 1956. The book collects nineteen novellas, novelettes and short stories by various science fiction authors, together with an introduction by the editor. The stories were previously published from 1939-1954 in various science fiction and other magazines. Contents *"Introduction" (Groff Conklin) *"The Education of Drusilla Strange" (Theodore Sturgeon) *"c/o Mr. Makepeace" (Peter Phillips) *"Technical Slip" ( John Beynon) *"Short in the Chest" ( Idris Seabright) *"Cure for a Ylith" (Murray Leinster) *"Exposure" (Eric Frank Russell) *"Worrywart" (Clifford D. Simak) *"Day Is Done" (Lester del Rey) *"Quit Zoomin' Those Hands Through the Air" (Jack Finney) *"Hilda" ( H. B. Hickey) *"Blood's a Rover" (Chad Oliver) *"Call Me Adam" ( Winston K. Marks) *" Special Delivery" (Damon Knight) *"The Garden in the Fo ...
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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 ...
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Hardcover
A hardcover, hard cover, or hardback (also known as hardbound, and sometimes as case-bound) book is one bound with rigid protective covers (typically of binder's board or heavy paperboard covered with buckram or other cloth, heavy paper, or occasionally leather). It has a flexible, sewn spine which allows the book to lie flat on a surface when opened. Modern hardcovers may have the pages glued onto the spine in much the same way as paperbacks. Following the ISBN sequence numbers, books of this type may be identified by the abbreviation Hbk. Hardcover books are often printed on acid-free paper, and they are much more durable than paperbacks, which have flexible, easily damaged paper covers. Hardcover books are marginally more costly to manufacture. Hardcovers are frequently protected by artistic dust jackets, but a "jacketless" alternative has increased in popularity: these "paper-over-board" or "jacketless" hardcover bindings forgo the dust jacket in favor of printing the cove ...
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United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in free association with three Pacific Island sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City. Paleo-Americ ...
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Magazine
A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combination of the three. Definition In the technical sense a ''journal'' has continuous pagination throughout a volume. Thus '' Business Week'', which starts each issue anew with page one, is a magazine, but the '' Journal of Business Communication'', which continues the same sequence of pagination throughout the coterminous year, is a journal. Some professional or trade publications are also peer-reviewed, for example the '' Journal of Accountancy''. Non-peer-reviewed academic or professional publications are generally ''professional magazines''. That a publication calls itself a ''journal'' does not make it a journal in the technical sense; ''The Wall Street Journal'' is actually a newspaper. Etymology The word "magazine" derives from Arabic , ...
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Galaxy Science Fiction
''Galaxy Science Fiction'' was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published in Boston from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by a French-Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break into the American market. World Editions hired as editor H. L. Gold, who rapidly made ''Galaxy'' the leading science fiction magazine of its time, focusing on stories about social issues rather than technology. Gold published many notable stories during his tenure, including Ray Bradbury's "The Fireman", later expanded as ''Fahrenheit 451''; Robert A. Heinlein's ''The Puppet Masters''; and Alfred Bester's ''The Demolished Man''. In 1952, the magazine was acquired by Robert Guinn, its printer. By the late 1950s, Frederik Pohl was helping Gold with most aspects of the magazine's production. When Gold's health worsened, Pohl took over as editor, starting officially at the end of 1961, though he had been doing the majority of the production work for some time. Under Pohl ''Gala ...
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