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The Happy Breed
"The Happy Breed" is a short story by American writer John Sladek, originally published in Harlan Ellison's anthology ''Dangerous Visions'' (1967). It is Sladek's first published story. Synopsis The last five adults discuss how their lives have improved ever since the computers took over the world and made everything better for everyone all the time. Reception Graham Sleight called it "fine and cutting", Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek reviewed by at ; published March 15, 2003; retrieved August 15, 2017 and |
John Sladek
John Thomas Sladek (December 15, 1937 – March 10, 2000) was an American science fiction author, known for his satirical and surreal novels. Life and work Born in Waverly, Iowa, in 1937, Sladek was in England in the 1960s for the New Wave movement and published his first story in the magazine'' New Worlds''. His first science fiction novel, published in London by Gollancz as '' The Reproductive System'' and in the United States as '' Mechasm'', dealt with a project to build machines that build copies of themselves, a process that gets out of hand and threatens to destroy humanity. In '' The Müller-Fokker Effect'', an attempt to preserve human personality on tape likewise goes awry, giving the author a chance to satirize big business, big religion, superpatriotism, and men's magazines, among other things. ''Roderick'' and ''Roderick at Random'' offer the traditional satirical approach of looking at the world through the eyes of an innocent, in this case a robot. Sladek r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in free association with three Pacific Island sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City. Paleo-Americ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th ... [...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] |
Anthology
In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors. In genre fiction, the term ''anthology'' typically categorizes collections of shorter works, such as short stories and short novels, by different authors, each featuring unrelated casts of characters and settings, and usually collected into a single volume for publication. Alternatively, it can also be a collection of selected writings (short stories, poems etc.) by one author. Complete collections of works are often called "complete works" or "" (Latin equivalent). Etymology The word entered the English language in the 17th century, from the Greek word, ἀνθολογία (''anthologic'', literally "a collection of blossoms", from , ''ánthos'', flower), a reference to one of the earliest known anthologies, the ''Garland'' (, ''stéphanos''), the introduction to which compares each of its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dangerous Visions
''Dangerous Visions'' is a science fiction short story anthology edited by American writer Harlan Ellison and illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. It was published in 1967. A path-breaking collection, ''Dangerous Visions'' helped define the New Wave science fiction movement, particularly in its depiction of sex in science fiction. Writer/editor Al Sarrantonio writes how ''Dangerous Visions'' "almost single-handedly ..changed the way readers thought about science fiction." Contributors to the volume included 20 authors who had won, or would win, a Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, or BSFA award, and 16 with multiple such awards. Ellison introduced the anthology both collectively and individually while authors provided afterwords to their own stories. Description Advertisements described ''Dangerous Visions'' as "For the first time anywhere—33 great new stories by all the science fiction masters of our time", and "Not collected from magazines, not collected from other books ... one ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Doubleday (publisher)
Doubleday is an American publishing company. It was founded as the Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897 and was the largest in the United States by 1947. It published the work of mostly U.S. authors under a number of imprints and distributed them through its own stores. In 2009 Doubleday merged with Knopf Publishing Group to form the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, which is now part of Penguin Random House. In 2019, the official website presents Doubleday as an imprint, not a publisher. History The firm was founded as Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897 by Frank Nelson Doubleday in partnership with Samuel Sidney McClure. McClure had founded the first U.S. newspaper syndicate in 1884 (McClure Syndicate) and the monthly ''McClure's Magazine'' in 1893. One of their first bestsellers was ''The Day's Work'' by Rudyard Kipling, a short story collection that Macmillan published in Britain late in 1898. Other authors published by the company in its early years include W. Somerset M ... [...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] |
Harlan Ellison
Harlan Jay Ellison (May 27, 1934 – June 28, 2018) was an American writer, known for his prolific and influential work in New Wave speculative fiction and for his outspoken, combative personality. Robert Bloch, the author of '' Psycho'', described Ellison as "the only living organism I know whose natural habitat is hot water." His published works include more than 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays, and a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media. Some of his best-known works include the 1967 '' Star Trek'' episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" (he subsequently wrote a book about the experience that includes his original screenplay), his ''A Boy and His Dog'' cycle, and his short stories " I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" and " 'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman". He was also editor and anthologist for '' Dangerous Visions'' (1967) and '' Again, Dangerous Visions'' (1972). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graham Sleight
Graham Sleight (born 1972) is a British writer, editor and critic, specialising in healthcare and science fiction. He is Head of Governance and Contracts at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and editor of the science fiction peer-reviewed literary magazine, ''Foundation''. His criticism has appeared in ''Strange Horizons'', ''The New York Review Of Science Fiction'', and ''Vector''. He also writes a column for ''Locus''. Several volumes in the Gollancz SF Masterworks series contain introductions written by Sleight. In 2005 and 2006 he was a judge of the Arthur C. Clarke Award. He is Managing Editor of the third edition of ''The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (SFE3)''. The 2012 Hugo Award for Best Related Work was given to the ''SFE3''. Sleight accepted the award from emcee John Scalzi on behalf of the editors, saying, "We set out to build this really for the whole of the SF community... for any and all who are hungry for information about science fiction." Sle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Infinity Plus
''Infinity Plus'' (sometimes stylized as ''infinity plus'' and ''infinityplus'') was a science fiction webzine active from 1997 to 2007,science fiction, fantasy and horror from infinity plus retrieved May 13, 2018 specializing in reviews, interviews, and professionally written fiction. It was founded by (who took a "deliberately elitist approach"); The story of infinity plus originally published in '' Interzone ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keith Brooke
Keith Brooke is a science fiction author, editor, web publisher and anthologist from Essex, England. He is the founder and editor of the infinity plus webzine. He also writes children's fiction under the name Nick Gifford. Biography and publishing history Keith Brooke studied environmental science at university, and took a year out after graduating to write a novel. That novel, ''Keepers of the Peace'', was published by Gollancz in 1990. He remained a full-time writer for some eight years, before finding work in various multimedia, web development and editorial roles at the Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education (now the University of Gloucestershire) and the University of Essex; in 2014 he returned to full-time writing and editing. Brooke's first story was published in the British small press magazine ''Dream'' in 1989, but it was his first sale to '' Interzone'', the story 'Adenotropic Man', which first brought him notice. He continued to be published in ''Interz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
