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Specialist (short Story)
"Specialist" is a science fiction short story by American writer Robert Sheckley. It was first published in 1953 and has appeared in various collections, including'' Untouched by Human Hands'' (1954) and'' The Golden Age of Science Fiction'', edited by Kingsley Amis in 1981. Plot A galactic deep-space cargo bioship is blown off course by a photon storm. When the crew recover, they find themselves in an unexplored region of space and their only members of the Pusher race, which allows the ship to travel faster than light, is dead. The Crew comprises varied members of vastly different intelligent races, all in close mental rapport known as the Cooperation, and serving specialized functions; they are known as Engine, Thinker, Eye etc. But without a Pusher, they cannot sustain FTL speeds and are unlikely to reach home before most of the crew die of old age. They manage to locate a planet rich in primitive Pushers, Earth. The crew try to communicate with a man they find, but he is so ... [...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] |
Short Story
A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest types of literature and has existed in the form of legends, mythic tales, folk tales, fairy tales, tall tales, fables and anecdotes in various ancient communities around the world. The modern short story developed in the early 19th century. Definition The short story is a crafted form in its own right. Short stories make use of plot, resonance, and other dynamic components as in a novel, but typically to a lesser degree. While the short story is largely distinct from the novel or novella/short novel, authors generally draw from a common pool of literary techniques. The short story is sometimes referred to as a genre. Determining what exactly defines a short story has been recurrently problematic. A classic definition of a short story ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Sheckley
Robert Sheckley (July 16, 1928 – December 9, 2005) was an American writer. First published in the science-fiction magazines of the 1950s, his many quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist, and broadly comical. Nominated for Hugo and Nebula Awards, Sheckley was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001. Biography Sheckley was born to an assimilated Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York City. In 1931 the family moved to Maplewood, New Jersey. Sheckley attended Columbia High School, where he discovered science fiction. He graduated in 1946 and hitchhiked to California the same year, where he tried numerous jobs: landscape gardener, pretzel salesman, barman, milkman, warehouseman, and general laborer "board man" in a hand-painted necktie studio. Finally, still in 1946, he joined the U.S. Army and was sent to Korea.Jonas, Gerald"Robert Sheckley, 77, Writer of Satirical Science Fiction, Is Dead" ''The New York ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Untouched By Human Hands
''Untouched by Human Hands'' is a collection of science fiction short stories by American writer Robert Sheckley. It was first published in 1954 simultaneously by Ballantine Books (catalogue number 73), both in hardback and paperback. Contents The collection includes the following stories (magazines in which the stories originally appeared given in parentheses): * " The Monsters" (''F&SF'', March 1953) *Cost of Living (Galaxy 1952/12) * "The Altar" (''Fantastic'', July/August 1953) *Keep Your Shape (''Galaxy'', November 1953; also known as "Shape") * "The Impacted Man" ( ''Astounding SF'', December 1952) * "Untouched by Human Hands" (''Galaxy'', December 1953; also known as "One Man's Poison") * "The King's Wishes" (''F&SF'', July 1953) *Warm (''Galaxy'', June 1953) * "The Demons" (''Fantasy Magazine'', March 1953) * " Specialist" (''Galaxy'', May 1953) * " Seventh Victim" (''Galaxy'', April 1953) * "Ritual" (''Climax'', 1953; also known as "Strange Ritual") * "Beside Still Wate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Golden Age Of Science Fiction (anthology)
''The Golden Age of Science Fiction'' is an anthology of science fiction short stories all originally published between 1949 and 1962. The stories were selected and introduced by Kingsley Amis, who also wrote an Editor's Note and a 21-page Introduction. The collection was first published by Hutchinson in 1981 and was released in paperback by Penguin in 1983. Contents The book includes the following stories: * "The Quest for Saint Aquin", by Anthony Boucher * " The Xi Effect", by Philip Latham *"The Tunnel under the World", by Frederik Pohl * "Old Hundredth", by Brian Aldiss * "A Work of Art", by James Blish * "Harrison Bergeron", by Kurt Vonnegut * " The Voices of Time", by J. G. Ballard * " Specialist", by Robert Sheckley *"He Walked Around the Horses", by H. Beam Piper * "The Game of Rat and Dragon", by Cordwainer Smith * "The Nine Billion Names of God", by Arthur C. Clarke * "The Streets of Ashkelon", by Harry Harrison * "The Country of the Kind", by Damon Knight * " The Ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social and literary criticism. He is best known for satirical comedies such as ''Lucky Jim'' (1954), ''One Fat Englishman'' (1963), ''Ending Up'' (1974), ''Jake's Thing'' (1978) and ''The Old Devils'' (1986). His biographer Zachary Leader called Amis "the finest English comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century." He is the father of the novelist Martin Amis. In 2008, ''The Times'' ranked him ninth on a list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Life and career Kingsley Amis was born on 16 April 1922 in Clapham, south London, the only child of William Robert Amis (1889–1963), a clerk for the mustard manufacturer Colman's in the City of London, and his wife Rosa Annie (née Lucas). The Amis grandparents were wealthy. Wil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cargo
Cargo consists of bulk goods conveyed by water, air, or land. In economics, freight is cargo that is transported at a freight rate for commercial gain. ''Cargo'' was originally a shipload but now covers all types of freight, including transport by rail, van, truck, or intermodal container. The term cargo is also used in case of goods in the cold-chain, because the perishable inventory is always in transit towards a final end-use, even when it is held in cold storage or other similar climate-controlled facility. The term freight is commonly used to describe the movements of flows of goods being transported by any mode of transportation. Multi-modal container units, designed as reusable carriers to facilitate unit load handling of the goods contained, are also referred to as cargo, especially by shipping lines and logistics operators. Similarly, aircraft ULD boxes are also documented as cargo, with an associated packing list of the items contained within. When empty conta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bioship
A bioship is a type of spacecraft or starship described in science fiction as either predominantly or totally composed of biological components, rather than being constructed from manufactured materials. Because of this, they nearly always have a distinctively organic look. Bioships are usually quite powerful, and can often regenerate or heal damaged parts. Some bioships are intelligent or sentient, and some are considered to be lifeforms. Like most organic beings, many bioships contain large amounts of "scaffolding" materials to keep their shape, such as the xylem in trees or bone and chitin in animals. In fiction In the science fiction short story " Specialist" by Robert Sheckley, published in 1953 in '' Galaxy'' magazine, it is revealed that many galactic races are actually capable of symbiotic cooperation to become bioships, with each race forming a different part. Earth, apparently, is one of the planets inhabited by creatures that are supposed to function as FTL (faster ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Photon
A photon () is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are massless, so they always move at the speed of light in vacuum, (or about ). The photon belongs to the class of bosons. As with other elementary particles, photons are best explained by quantum mechanics and exhibit wave–particle duality, their behavior featuring properties of both waves and particles. The modern photon concept originated during the first two decades of the 20th century with the work of Albert Einstein, who built upon the research of Max Planck. While trying to explain how matter and electromagnetic radiation could be in thermal equilibrium with one another, Planck proposed that the energy stored within a material object should be regarded as composed of an integer number of discrete, equal-sized parts. To explain the photoelectric effect, Eins ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Faster-than-light
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] |
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, movies/videos, moving images, and millions of books. In addition to its archiving function, the Archive is an activist organization, advocating a free and open Internet. , the Internet Archive holds over 35 million books and texts, 8.5 million movies, videos and TV shows, 894 thousand software programs, 14 million audio files, 4.4 million images, 2.4 million TV clips, 241 thousand concerts, and over 734 billion web pages in the Wayback Machine. The Internet Archive allows the public to upload and download digital material to its data cluster, but the bulk of its data is collected automatically by its web crawlers, which work to preserve as much of the public web as possible. Its web archiving, web archive, the Wayback Machine, contains hu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
