The Gernsback Continuum
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The Gernsback Continuum
"The Gernsback Continuum" is a 1981 science fiction short story by American-Canadian author William Gibson, originally published in the anthology ''Universe 11'' edited by Terry Carr. It was later reprinted in Gibson's collection ''Burning Chrome'', and in ''Mirrorshades'', edited by Bruce Sterling. With some similarity to Gibson's later appraisal of Singapore for ''Wired'' magazine in ''Disneyland with the Death Penalty'', as much essay as fiction, it depicts the encounters of an American photographer with the period futuristic architecture of the American 1930s when he is assigned to document it for fictional London publishers Barris-Watford, and the gradual incursion of its cinematic future visions into his world. The "Gernsback" of the title alludes to Hugo Gernsback, the pioneer of early 20th century American pulp magazine science fiction. Plot summary Assigned to photograph 1930s period futuristic American architecture by London publishing figures Cohen and Dialta Downes ...
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WikiProject Novels
A WikiProject, or Wikiproject, is a Wikimedia movement affinity group for contributors with shared goals. WikiProjects are prevalent within the largest wiki, Wikipedia, and exist to varying degrees within sister projects such as Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikidata, and Wikisource. They also exist in different languages, and translation of articles is a form of their collaboration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, CBS News noted the role of Wikipedia's WikiProject Medicine in maintaining the accuracy of articles related to the disease. Another WikiProject that has drawn attention is WikiProject Women Scientists, which was profiled by '' Smithsonian'' for its efforts to improve coverage of women scientists which the profile noted had "helped increase the number of female scientists on Wikipedia from around 1,600 to over 5,000". On Wikipedia Some Wikipedia WikiProjects are substantial enough to engage in cooperative activities with outside organizations relevant to the field at issue. For e ...
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Mirrorshades (book)
''Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology'' (1986) is a cyberpunk short story collection, edited by American writer Bruce Sterling. Contents * "The Gernsback Continuum" by William Gibson * "Snake-Eyes" by Tom Maddox * "Rock On" by Pat Cadigan * "Tales of Houdini" by Rudy Rucker * "400 Boys" by Marc Laidlaw * "Solstice" by James Patrick Kelly * "Petra" by Greg Bear * "Till Human Voices Wake Us" by Lewis Shiner * "Freezone" by John Shirley * "Stone Lives" by Paul Di Filippo Paul Di Filippo (born October 29, 1954) is an American science fiction writer. He is a regular reviewer for print magazines ''Asimov's Science Fiction'', ''The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction'', ''Science Fiction Eye'', ''The New York Re ... * " Red Star, Winter Orbit" by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson * " Mozart in Mirrorshades" by Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner References 1986 anthologies American short story collections Cyberpunk short stories {{1980s-story-collection-stub ...
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Pulp Magazine
Pulp magazines (also referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were called "glossies" or "slicks". The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages; it was wide by high, and thick, with ragged, untrimmed edges. The pulps gave rise to the term pulp fiction in reference to run-of-the-mill, low-quality literature. Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the 19th century. Although many respected writers wrote for pulps, the magazines were best known for their lurid, exploitative, and sensational subject matter, even though this was but a small part of what existed in the pulps. Successors of pulps include paperback books, digest magazines, and men's adventure magazines. Modern superhero comic books are sometimes considere ...
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Collective Unconscious
Collective unconscious (german: kollektives Unbewusstes) refers to the unconscious mind and shared mental concepts. It is generally associated with idealism and was coined by Carl Jung. According to Jung, the human collective unconscious is populated by instincts, as well as by archetypes: ancient primal symbols such as The Great Mother, the Wise Old Man, the Shadow, the Tower, Water, and the Tree of Life. Jung considered the collective unconscious to underpin and surround the unconscious mind, distinguishing it from the personal unconscious of Freudian psychoanalysis. He believed that the concept of the collective unconscious helps to explain why similar themes occur in mythologies around the world. He argued that the collective unconscious had a profound influence on the lives of individuals, who lived out its symbols and clothed them in meaning through their experiences. The psychotherapeutic practise of analytical psychology revolves around examining the patient's relationship to ...
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Semiotics
Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something, usually called a meaning, to the sign's interpreter. The meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can also communicate feelings (which are usually not considered meanings) and may communicate internally (through thought itself) or through any of the senses: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory (taste). Contemporary semiotics is a branch of science that studies meaning-making and various types of knowledge. The semiotic tradition explores the study of signs and symbols as a significant part of communications. Unlike linguistics, semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems. Semiotics includes th ...
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Aryan Race
The Aryan race is an obsolete historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people of Proto-Indo-European heritage as a racial grouping. The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan, used by modern Indo-Iranians as an epithet of "noble". Anthropological, historical, and archaeological evidence does not support the validity of this concept.Arvidsson 2006:298 Arvidsson, Stefan (2006), Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, translated by Sonia Wichmann, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. The concept derives from the notion that the original speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language were distinct progenitors of a superior specimen of humankind, and that their descendants up to the present day constitute either a distinctive race or a sub-race of the Caucasian race, alongside the Semitic race and the Hamitic race. This taxonomic approach to categorizing human population groups is now conside ...
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Zeppelins
A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship named after the German inventor Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin () who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelin's notions were first formulated in 1874Eckener 1938, pp. 155–157. and developed in detail in 1893.Dooley 2004, p. A.187. They were patented in Germany in 1895 and in the United States in 1899. After the outstanding success of the Zeppelin design, the word ''zeppelin'' came to be commonly used to refer to all rigid airships. Zeppelins were first flown commercially in 1910 by Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG (DELAG), the world's first airline in revenue service. By mid-1914, DELAG had carried over 10,000 fare-paying passengers on over 1,500 flights. During World War I, the German military made extensive use of Zeppelins German strategic bombing during World War I, as bombers and aerial reconnaissance in World War I, as scouts, resulting in over 500 deaths in bombing raids in Britain. The defeat of ...
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Utopia
A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia (book), Utopia'', describing a fictional island society in the New World. However, it may also denote an intentional community. In common parlance, the word or its adjectival form may be used synonymously with "impossible", "far-fetched" or "deluded". Hypothetical utopias focus on—amongst other things—equality, in such categories as economics, government and justice, with the method and structure of proposed implementation varying based on ideology. Lyman Tower Sargent argues that the nature of a utopia is inherently contradictory because societies are not homogeneous and have desires which conflict and therefore cannot simultaneously be satisfied. To quote: The opposite of a utopia is a dystopia or cacotopia. Utopian and dystopian fiction has become a popular literary catego ...
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Raygun Gothic
Raygun Gothic is a catchall term for a visual and architectural style that incorporates various aspects of the Googie architecture, Googie, Streamline Moderne and Art Deco architectural styles when applied to Retrofuturism, retrofuturistic science fiction environments. Academic Lance Olsen has characterised Raygun Gothic as "a tomorrow that never was". It is inspired by Space Age, Cyberpunk derivatives#Raypunk, raypunk and atompunk subcultures. The style has also been associated with architectural indulgence, and situated in the context of the golden age of modernism, modern design due to its use of features such as "single-support beam (structure), beams, acute angles, brightly colored paneling" as well as "shapes and cutouts showing motion". Origin The term was coined by William Gibson in his 1981 story "The Gernsback Continuum":"The Gernsback Continuum" in See also * Mid-century modern * Populuxe * Space Age * Tomorrowland * Atompunk * Dieselpunk Notes 4.^ "Loki" ...
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Pulp Magazine
Pulp magazines (also referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were called "glossies" or "slicks". The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages; it was wide by high, and thick, with ragged, untrimmed edges. The pulps gave rise to the term pulp fiction in reference to run-of-the-mill, low-quality literature. Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the 19th century. Although many respected writers wrote for pulps, the magazines were best known for their lurid, exploitative, and sensational subject matter, even though this was but a small part of what existed in the pulps. Successors of pulps include paperback books, digest magazines, and men's adventure magazines. Modern superhero comic books are sometimes considere ...
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Hugo Gernsback
Hugo Gernsback (; born Hugo Gernsbacher, August 16, 1884 – August 19, 1967) was a Luxembourgish–American editor and magazine publisher, whose publications including the first science fiction magazine. His contributions to the genre as publisher were so significant that, along with the novelists H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, he is sometimes called "The Father of Science Fiction". In his honor, annual awards presented at the World Science Fiction Convention are named the "Hugo Award, Hugos". Personal life Gernsback was born in 1884 in Luxembourg City, to Berta (Dürlacher), a housewife, and Moritz Gernsbacher, a winemaker. His family was Jewish. Gernsback emigrated to the United States in 1904 and later became a naturalized citizen. He married three times: to Rose Harvey in 1906, Dorothy Kantrowitz in 1921, and Mary Hancher in 1951. In 1925, he founded radio station WRNY (New York City), WRNY, which was broadcast from the 18th floor of Roosevelt Hotel (New York), the Rooseve ...
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Futurist Architecture
Futurist architecture is an early-20th century form of architecture born in Italy, characterized by long dynamic lines, suggesting speed, motion, urgency and lyricism: it was a part of Futurism, an artistic movement founded by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who produced its first manifesto, the ''Manifesto of Futurism'', in 1909. The movement attracted not only poets, musicians, and artists (such as Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, Fortunato Depero, and Enrico Prampolini) but also a number of architects. A cult of the Machine Age and even a glorification of war and violence were among the themes of the Futurists - several prominent futurists were killed after volunteering to fight in World War I. The latter group included the architect Antonio Sant'Elia, who, though building little, translated the futurist vision into an urban form. History of Italian Futurism In 1912, three years after Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto, Antonio Sant'Elia and Mario Chiattone take part to the ...
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