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The Long Earth (series)
''The Long Earth'' is a collaborative science fiction novel series by British authors Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. At the time of Pratchett's death (12 March 2015), three novels had been released, with a fourth published on 23 June 2015 and the fifth published on 30 June 2016. Development The original basis for the series was Pratchett's then-unpublished short story "The High Meggas", which he wrote as a starting point for a potential series while his first Discworld novel, ''The Colour of Magic'', was undergoing publication. The success of ''The Colour of Magic'' prompted Pratchett to put the story aside in favour of working on ''The Light Fantastic''. The idea resurfaced in late 2010 following a dinner conversation with his assistant and American agent, and discussion with Stephen Baxter prompted the development of the first book in the series, '' The Long Earth'', and the collaboration between the two authors.Foreword by Stephen Baxter to PRATCHETT, Terry. BAXTER, St ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terry Pratchett
Sir Terence David John Pratchett (28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015) was an English humourist, satirist, and author of fantasy novels, especially comical works. He is best known for his ''Discworld'' series of 41 novels. Pratchett's first novel, ''The Carpet People'', was published in 1971. The first ''Discworld'' novel, ''The Colour of Magic'', was published in 1983, after which Pratchett wrote an average of two books a year. The final ''Discworld'' novel, ''The Shepherd's Crown'', was published in August 2015, five months after his death. With more than 85 million books sold worldwide in 37 languages, Pratchett was the UK's best-selling author of the 1990s. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1998 and was knighted for services to literature in the 2009 New Year Honours. In 2001 he won the annual Carnegie Medal for ''The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents'', the first ''Discworld'' book marketed for children. He received the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hard Science Fiction
Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell's '' Islands of Space'' in the November issue of ''Astounding Science Fiction''. The complementary term soft science fiction, formed by analogy to hard science fiction,) first appeared in the late 1970s. The term is formed by analogy to the popular distinction between the "hard" (natural) and "soft" (social) sciences, although there are examples generally considered as "hard" SF, such as Isaac Asimov's ''Foundation'' series, built on mathematical sociology. Science fiction critic Gary Westfahl argues that neither term is part of a rigorous taxonomy; instead they are approximate ways of characterizing stories that reviewers and commentators have found useful. History Stories revolving around scientific and technical consistency were written as early as the 1870s with the p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science Fantasy Novels
Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, 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 Common Era, 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 Universe, physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of History of science in classical antiquity, 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science Fiction Book Series
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] |
Book Series Introduced In 2012
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is ''codex'' (plural, ''codices''). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page. As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's ''Physics'' is called a bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Institution
The Royal Institution of Great Britain (often the Royal Institution, Ri or RI) is an organisation for scientific education and research, based in the City of Westminster. It was founded in 1799 by the leading British scientists of the age, including Henry Cavendish and its first president, George Finch. Its foundational principles were diffusing the knowledge of, and facilitating the general introduction of useful mechanical inventions and improvements, as well as enhancing the application of science to the common purposes of life (including through teaching, courses of philosophical lectures, and experiments). Much of the Institution's initial funding and the initial proposal for its founding were given by the Society for Bettering the Conditions and Improving the Comforts of the Poor, under the guidance of philanthropist Sir Thomas Bernard and American-born British scientist Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford. Since its founding it has been based at 21 Albemarle Street ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Living Space
Housing, or more generally, living spaces, refers to the construction and assigned usage of houses or buildings individually or collectively, for the purpose of shelter. Housing ensures that members of society have a place to live, whether it is a home or some other kind of dwelling, lodging or shelter. Many governments have one or more housing authorities, sometimes also called a housing ministry or housing department. Housing in many different areas consists of public, social and private housing. In the United States, it was not until the 19th and 20th century that there was a lot more government involvement in housing. It was mainly aimed at helping those who were poor in the community. Public housing provides help and assistance to those who are poor and mainly low-income earners. A study report shows that there are many individuals living in public housing. There are over 1.2 million families or households. These types of housing were built mainly to provide people, m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sliders (TV Series)
''Sliders'' is an American science fiction and fantasy television series created by Robert K. Weiss and Tracy Tormé. It was broadcast for five seasons between 1995 and 2000. The series follows a group of travelers as they use a wormhole to "slide" between different parallel universes. Tracy Tormé, Robert K. Weiss, Leslie Belzberg, John Landis, David Peckinpah, Bill Dial and Alan Barnette served as executive producers at different times of the production. For its first two seasons, it was produced in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was filmed primarily in Los Angeles, California, in the last three seasons. The first three seasons were broadcast by the Fox network. After being canceled by Fox, the series moved to Sci Fi Channel for its final two seasons. The final episode was shown in the United Kingdom in December 1999, and on the Sci Fi Channel in February 2000. Plot The show's titular characters are a group of people who travel ("slide") between different Earths in par ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heterotopia (space)
Heterotopia is a concept elaborated by philosopher Michel Foucault to describe certain cultural, institutional and discursive spaces that are somehow 'other': disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory or transforming. Heterotopias are worlds within worlds, mirroring and yet upsetting what is outside. Foucault provides examples: ships, cemeteries, bars, brothels, prisons, gardens of antiquity, fairs, Muslim baths and many more. Foucault outlines the notion of heterotopia on three occasions between 1966–1967. A lecture given by Foucault to a group of architects in 1967 is the most well-known explanation of the term. His first mention of the concept is in his preface to ''The Order of Things'', and refers to texts rather than socio-cultural spaces. Etymology Heterotopia follows the template established by the notions of utopia and dystopia. The prefix hetero- is from Ancient Greek ἕτερος (héteros, "other, another, different") and is combined with the Greek morphem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main news ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homo Habilis
''Homo habilis'' ("handy man") is an extinct species of archaic human from the Early Pleistocene of East and South Africa about 2.31 million years ago to 1.65 million years ago (mya). Upon species description in 1964, ''H. habilis'' was highly contested, with many researchers recommending it be synonymised with '' Australopithecus africanus'', the only other early hominin known at the time, but ''H. habilis'' received more recognition as time went on and more relevant discoveries were made. By the 1980s, ''H. habilis'' was proposed to have been a human ancestor, directly evolving into '' Homo erectus'' which directly led to modern humans. This viewpoint is now debated. Several specimens with insecure species identification were assigned to ''H. habilis'', leading to arguments for splitting, namely into "''H. rudolfensis''" and "'' H. gautengensis''" of which only the former has received wide support. Like contemporary ''Homo'', ''H. habilis'' brain size generally varied from . ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hominid
The Hominidae (), whose members are known as the great apes or hominids (), are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: '' Pongo'' (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); ''Gorilla'' (the eastern and western gorilla); '' Pan'' (the chimpanzee and the bonobo); and ''Homo'', of which only modern humans remain. Several revisions in classifying the great apes have caused the use of the term ''"hominid"'' to vary over time. The original meaning of "hominid" referred only to humans (''Homo'') and their closest extinct relatives. However, by the 1990s humans, apes, and their ancestors were considered to be "hominids". The earlier restrictive meaning has now been largely assumed by the term ''"hominin"'', which comprises all members of the human clade after the split from the chimpanzees (''Pan''). The current meaning of "hominid" includes all the great apes including humans. Usage still varies, however, and some scientists and layper ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
