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The Machine's Child
''The Machine's Child'' is a science fiction novel by American writer Kage Baker. It is the seventh book in the series concerning the exploits of Dr. Zeus Inc., otherwise known as The Company. Plot introduction Several elements introduced as far back as the fourth book ''The Graveyard Game'' develop in this volume. Most of the characters are immortal cyborgs created in the past by an organization, Dr. Zeus Inc., which exists in the 24th century and has both time travel and immortality technology. The official business of Dr. Zeus is the "finding", for a fee, of artifacts and living things thought lost to time, which have actually been carefully collected by the cyborgs known as Preservers, aided by the fixers, conmen and masters of deception known as Facilitators. Alec Checkerfield, introduced in ''The Life of the World to Come'', is trying to find his lost love, the Preserver known as the Botanist Mendoza. With the aid of his AI helper "Captain Morgan" and their time tra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kage Baker
Kage Baker (June 10, 1952 – January 31, 2010Obituary: Kage Baker " SF Site, January 31, 2010) was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. Biography Baker was born and raised in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, Hollywood, California, and lived in Pismo Beach, California, Pismo Beach later in life. Before becoming a professional writer she spent many years in theater, including teaching Elizabethan English as a second language. Her unusual first name (pronounced like the word ''cage'') is a combination of the names of her two grandmothers, Kate and Genevieve. She is best known for her "Dr. Zeus Inc., Company" series of historical time travel science fiction. Her first stories were published in ''Asimov's Science Fiction'' in 1997, and her first novel, ''In the Garden of Iden'', by H ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Death
The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causing the deaths of people, peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351. Bubonic plague is caused by the bacterium ''Yersinia pestis'' spread by fleas, but it can also take a secondary form where it is spread by person-to-person contact via aerosols causing septicaemic or pneumonic plagues. The Black Death was the beginning of the second plague pandemic. The plague created religious, social and economic upheavals, with profound effects on the course of European history. The origin of the Black Death is disputed. The pandemic originated either in Central Asia or East Asia before spreading to Crimea with the Golden Horde army of Jani Beg as he was besieging the Genoese trading port of Kaffa in Crimea (1347). From Crimea, it was most likely carried ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Symbiosis
Symbiosis (from Greek , , "living together", from , , "together", and , bíōsis, "living") is any type of a close and long-term biological interaction between two different biological organisms, be it mutualistic, commensalistic, or parasitic. The organisms, each termed a symbiont, must be of different species. In 1879, Heinrich Anton de Bary defined it as "the living together of unlike organisms". The term was subject to a century-long debate about whether it should specifically denote mutualism, as in lichens. Biologists have now abandoned that restriction. Symbiosis can be obligatory, which means that one or more of the symbionts depend on each other for survival, or facultative (optional), when they can generally live independently. Symbiosis is also classified by physical attachment. When symbionts form a single body it is called conjunctive symbiosis, while all other arrangements are called disjunctive symbiosis."symbiosis." Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst Sr. (; April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American businessman, newspaper publisher, and politician known for developing the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company, Hearst Communications. His flamboyant methods of yellow journalism influenced the nation's popular media by emphasizing sensationalism and human interest stories. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887 with Mitchell Trubitt after being given control of ''The San Francisco Examiner'' by his wealthy father, Senator George Hearst. After moving to New York City, Hearst acquired the '' New York Journal'' and fought a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer's '' New York World''. Hearst sold papers by printing giant headlines over lurid stories featuring crime, corruption, sex, and innuendos. Hearst acquired more newspapers and created a chain that numbered nearly 30 papers in major American cities at its peak. He later expanded to magazines, creating the largest ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ichthyosaur
Ichthyosaurs (Ancient Greek for "fish lizard" – and ) are large extinct marine reptiles. Ichthyosaurs belong to the order known as Ichthyosauria or Ichthyopterygia ('fish flippers' – a designation introduced by Sir Richard Owen in 1842, although the term is now used more for the parent clade of the Ichthyosauria). Ichthyosaurs thrived during much of the Mesozoic era; based on fossil evidence, they first appeared around 250 million years ago ( Ma) and at least one species survived until about 90 million years ago, into the Late Cretaceous. During the Early Triassic epoch, ichthyosaurs and other ichthyosauromorphs evolved from a group of unidentified land reptiles that returned to the sea, in a development similar to how the mammalian land-dwelling ancestors of modern-day dolphins and whales returned to the sea millions of years later, which they gradually came to resemble in a case of convergent evolution. Ichthyosaurs were particularly abundant in the Late Triassic a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cyberspace
Cyberspace is a concept describing a widespread interconnected digital technology. "The expression dates back from the first decade of the diffusion of the internet. It refers to the online world as a world 'apart', as distinct from everyday reality. In cyberspace people can hide behind fake identities, as in the famous The New Yorker cartoon." (Delfanti, Arvidsson, 150) The term entered popular culture from science fiction and the arts but is now used by technology strategists, security professionals, government, military and industry leaders and entrepreneurs to describe the domain of the global technology environment, commonly defined as standing for the global network of interdependent information technology infrastructures, telecommunications networks and computer processing systems. Others consider cyberspace to be just a notional environment in which communication over computer networks occurs. The word became popular in the 1990s when the use of the Internet, networking, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abattoir
A slaughterhouse, also called abattoir (), is a facility where animals are slaughtered to provide food. Slaughterhouses supply meat, which then becomes the responsibility of a packaging facility. Slaughterhouses that produce meat that is not intended for human consumption are sometimes referred to as ''knacker's yards'' or ''knackeries''. This is where animals are slaughtered that are not fit for human consumption or that can no longer work on a farm, such as retired work horses. Slaughtering animals on a large scale poses significant issues in terms of logistics, animal welfare, and the environment, and the process must meet public health requirements. Due to public aversion in different cultures, determining where to build slaughterhouses is also a matter of some consideration. Frequently, animal rights groups raise concerns about the methods of transport to and from slaughterhouses, preparation prior to slaughter, animal herding, and the killing itself. History Until ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spanish Town
Spanish Town ( jam, label=Jamaican Creole, Panish Tong) is the capital and the largest town in the parish of St. Catherine in the historic county of Middlesex, Jamaica. It was the Spanish and British capital of Jamaica from 1534 until 1872. The town is home to numerous memorials, the national archives, and one of the oldest Anglican churches outside England (the others are in Virginia, Maryland, and Bermuda). History The Spanish settlement of Villa de la Vega was founded by the Spanish in 1534 as the capital of the colony. Later, it was also called Santiago de la Vega or St. Jago de la Vega. Indigenous Taino had been living in the area for approximately a millennium before this, but this was the first European habitation on the south of the island. When the English conquered Jamaica in 1655, they renamed the settlement as Spanish Town in honour to the original Spanish root of this town. Since the town was badly damaged during the conquest, Port Royal took on many admini ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1692 Jamaica Earthquake
The 1692 Jamaica earthquake struck Port Royal, Jamaica, on 7 June. A stopped pocket watch found in the harbor during a 1959 excavation indicated that it occurred around 11:43 AM local time. Known as the "storehouse and treasury of the West Indies" and as "one of the wickedest places on Earth", Port Royal was, at the time, the unofficial capital of Jamaica and one of the busiest and wealthiest ports in the Americas, as well as a common home port for many of the privateers and pirates operating on the Caribbean Sea. The 1692 earthquake caused most of the city to sink below sea level. About 2,000 people died as a result of the earthquake and the following tsunami, and another 3,000 people died in the following days due to injuries and disease. Tectonic setting The island of Jamaica lies on the boundary between the Caribbean Plate and the Gonâve Microplate. The Gonâve microplate is a long strip of mainly oceanic crust formed by the Cayman spreading ridge within a strike-sli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jamaica
Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola (the island containing the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic); the British Overseas Territory of the Cayman Islands lies some to the north-west. Originally inhabited by the indigenous Taíno peoples, the island came under Spanish rule following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1494. Many of the indigenous people either were killed or died of diseases, after which the Spanish brought large numbers of African slaves to Jamaica as labourers. The island remained a possession of Spain until 1655, when England (later Great Britain) conquered it, renaming it ''Jamaica''. Under British colonial rule Jamaica became a leading sugar exporter, with a plantation economy dependent on the African slaves and later their des ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Port Royal
Port Royal is a village located at the end of the Palisadoes, at the mouth of Kingston Harbour, in southeastern Jamaica. Founded in 1494 by the Spanish, it was once the largest city in the Caribbean, functioning as the centre of shipping and commerce in the Caribbean Sea by the latter half of the 17th century. It was destroyed by an earthquake on 7 June 1692, which had an accompanying tsunami, leading to the establishment of Kingston, which is now the largest city in Jamaica. Severe hurricanes have regularly damaged the area. Another severe earthquake occurred in 1907. Port Royal was once home to privateers who were encouraged to attack Spanish vessels, at a time when smaller European nations were reluctant to attack Spain directly. As a port city, it was notorious for its gaudy displays of wealth and loose morals. It was a popular homeport for the English and Dutch-sponsored privateers to spend their treasure during the 17th century. When those governments abandoned the prac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nanobots
Nanoid robotics, or for short, nanorobotics or nanobotics, is an emerging technology field creating machines or robots whose components are at or near the scale of a nanometer (10−9 meters). More specifically, nanorobotics (as opposed to microrobotics) refers to the nanotechnology engineering discipline of designing and building nanorobots with devices ranging in size from 0.1 to 10 micrometres and constructed of nanoscale or molecular components. The terms ''nanobot'', ''nanoid'', ''nanite'', ''nanomachine'' and ''nanomite'' have also been used to describe such devices currently under research and development. Nanomachines are largely in the research and development phase, but some primitive molecular machines and nanomotors have been tested. An example is a sensor having a switch approximately 1.5 nanometers across, able to count specific molecules in the chemical sample. The first useful applications of nanomachines may be in nanomedicine. For example, biological ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
_-_1st_June_2015_08.jpg "Click for more on -> Spanish Town")
