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Starman's Quest
''Starman's Quest'' is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert Silverberg. It was published in 1958 by Gnome Press in an edition of 5,000 copies, of which only 3,000 were bound. It was reprinted as a second edition in hardcover by Meredith Press in 1969. Plot summary The story revolves around protagonist Alan Donnell, having just turned 17 and living on a space ship for all his life. While mankind has finally mastered interstellar travel, it is still bound to the speed of light using so-called Lexman drives. As a result, spacefarers experience the FitzGerald contraction, aging only a couple of weeks during their flights, where—depending on the actual distance traveled—years or even centuries pass by. This leads to the strange situation that Alan biologically is 17, but 300 in earth years. Rumor has it that already in 2570, i.e. 1,300 years prior to the story time, the Cavour hyperdrive was invented by seclusive scientist James Hudson Cavour, who however vanished aft ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Silverberg
Robert Silverberg (born January 15, 1935) is an American author and editor, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple winner of both Hugo and Nebula Awards, a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, and a Grand Master of SF. He has attended every Hugo Awards ceremony since the inaugural event in 1953. Biography Early years Silverberg was born to Jewish parents in Brooklyn, New York. A voracious reader since childhood, he began submitting stories to science fiction magazines during his early teenage years. He received a BA in English Literature from Columbia University, in 1956. While at Columbia, he wrote the juvenile novel ''Revolt on Alpha C'' (1955), published by Thomas Y. Crowell with the cover notice: "A gripping story of outer space". He won his first Hugo in 1956 as the "best new writer". That year Silverberg was the author or co-author of four of the six stories in the August issue of ''Fantastic'', breaking his record set in the previ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stan Mack
Stan Mack (b. May 13, 1936) is an American cartoonist best known for his series, ''Stan Mack's Real Life Funnies'', which ran in ''The Village Voice'' for over 20 years. His ''Adweek'' comic strip, ''Stan Mack’s Outtakes'', covered the New York media scene. An early comic strip was ''Mule's Diner'', which ran in the ''National Lampoon (magazine), National Lampoon.'' Mack was born in Brooklyn but grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. He served in the United States Army, stationed at the United States Military Academy at West Point, in the Department of Social Sciences. Before turning to cartooning, Mack was the art director for Book Week at the ''New York Herald Tribune'', and art director of the Book and Education Department and ''The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Sunday Magazine'' at ''The New York Times.'' ''Real Life Funnies'' was notable for its semi-documentary feel: all dialog was culled from Mack's obs ... [...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] |
Gnome Press
Gnome Press was an American small-press publishing company primarily known for publishing many science fiction classics. Gnome was one of the most eminent of the fan publishers of SF, producing 86 titles in its lifespan — many considered classic works of SF and Fantasy today. Gnome was important in the transitional period between Genre SF as a magazine phenomenon and its arrival in mass-market book publishing, but proved too underfunded to make the leap from fan-based publishing to the professional level. The company existed for just over a decade, ultimately failing due to inability to compete with major publishers who also started to publish science fiction. In its heyday, Gnome published many of the major SF authors, and in some cases, as with Robert E. Howard's Conan series (published in six books from 1950 – 1955) and Isaac Asimov's Foundation series (published in three books from 1951 – 1953), was responsible for the manner in which their stories were collect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...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] |
1958 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1958. Events *January 7 – Tennessee Williams' one-act plays ''Suddenly, Last Summer'' and '' Something Unspoken'' are premièred off-Broadway. *January 13 – In ''One, Inc. v. Olesen'', the Supreme Court of the United States affirms that homosexual writing is not as such obscene. *March 29 – The stage première of Max Frisch's dark comedy ''Biedermann und die Brandstifter'' (known in English as '' The Fire Raisers'') takes place at the Schauspielhaus Zürich. *April 28 – The première of Harold Pinter's play '' The Birthday Party'' is held at the Cambridge Arts Theatre in England, with Richard Pearson playing the lead as Stanley. *May 19 – The London début of the production of Pinter's ''The Birthday Party'', starring Richard Pearson, takes place at the Lyric Opera House (Hammersmith). It closes after a week, but its reputation is saved by a review by Harold Hobson in ''The Sunday Times' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meredith Press
Meredith Press was a publishing company based in New York, with a focus on science fiction and general literature. While Already in 1950 they had y published the Better Homes and Gardens Story Book, they were particularly active in the years 1967-1969. Partial bibliography *''The Utter Zoo'', Edward Gorey (1967) *'' George Romney: Mormon in Politics'', Clark R. Mollenhoff (1968) *''Deathman, Do Not Follow Me'', Jay Bennett (1968) *'' Starman's Quest'', Robert Silverberg (1969) *''The Devil's Daughter'', Eleazar Lipsky Eleazar Lipsky (September 6, 1911 – February 14, 1993) was a prosecutor, lawyer, novelist and playwright born in the Bronx, New York, United States. He wrote the novels that formed the basis of two very successful films, ''Kiss of Death'' (b ... (1969) *''Love My Children: an Autobiography'', Rose Browne Butler (1969) External linksMeredith Press at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database American speculative fiction publishers Publishing companies of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
FitzGerald Contraction
Length contraction is the phenomenon that a moving object's length is measured to be shorter than its proper length, which is the length as measured in the object's own rest frame. It is also known as Lorentz contraction or Lorentz–FitzGerald contraction (after Hendrik Lorentz and George Francis FitzGerald) and is usually only noticeable at a substantial fraction of the speed of light. Length contraction is only in the direction in which the body is travelling. For standard objects, this effect is negligible at everyday speeds, and can be ignored for all regular purposes, only becoming significant as the object approaches the speed of light relative to the observer. History Length contraction was postulated by George FitzGerald (1889) and Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1892) to explain the negative outcome of the Michelson–Morley experiment and to rescue the hypothesis of the stationary aether ( Lorentz–FitzGerald contraction hypothesis). Although both FitzGerald and Lorentz al ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Advent (publisher)
Advent:Publishers is an American publishing house. It was founded by Earl Kemp and other members of the University of Chicago Science Fiction Club, including Sidney Coleman, in 1955, to publish criticism, history, and bibliography of the science fiction field, beginning with Damon Knight's ''In Search of Wonder''. With books like ''In Search of Wonder'' and James Blish's ''The Issue at Hand'', Advent became the genre's first scholarly publisher. Authors Authors in the field who have either written or edited Advent books, or been the subject of an Advent book, include: * Cy Chauvin * Reginald Bretnor *Theodore Cogswell *Robert A. Heinlein *Cyril Kornbluth *Alfred Bester *Robert Bloch *L. Sprague de Camp * Howard DeVore *E. E. Smith * Ron Ellik *Lloyd Arthur Eshbach *Damon Knight *Alexei Panshin *Donald H. Tuck *Harry Warner Jr Footnotes on First Beginnings: Advent & the UofCSF Club… “After exchanging a few letters with Mari Wolf (who was conducting “Fandora’s Bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1958 American Novels
Events January * January 1 – The European Economic Community (EEC) comes into being. * January 3 – The West Indies Federation is formed. * January 4 ** Edmund Hillary's Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the third overland journey to the South Pole, the first to use powered vehicles. ** Sputnik 1 (launched on October 4, 1957) falls to Earth from its orbit, and burns up. * January 13 – Battle of Edchera: The Moroccan Army of Liberation ambushes a Spanish patrol. * January 27 – A Soviet-American executive agreement on cultural, educational and scientific exchanges, also known as the "Lacy-Zarubin Agreement, Lacy–Zarubin Agreement", is signed in Washington, D.C. * January 31 – The first successful American satellite, Explorer 1, is launched into orbit. February * February 1 – Egypt and Syria unite, to form the United Arab Republic. * February 6 – Seven Manchester United F.C., Manchester United footballers are among the 21 people killed i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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