|
The Pi Man
"The Pi Man" is a science fiction short story by American writer Alfred Bester. It was first published in ''Fantasy and Science Fiction'', in 1959. Bester subsequently revised it extensively for his 1976 collection ''Star Light, Star Bright'', changing the characters' names, "develop(ing) minor scenes", modifying the typographical "word pictures", and deleting several "stale references to beatnik culture".Alfred Bester' by Jad Smith, published December 1 2016 by University of Illinois Press Synopsis Peter Marko's superhuman abilities of pattern recognition have allowed him to make a fortune in forex arbitrage; however, they also compel him to balance out the behaviors of the rest of the world by constantly performing seemingly-random acts of good and evil. This draws him into conflict, first with his secretary, and then with the FBI. Reception "The Pi Man" was a finalist for the 1960 Hugo Award for Best Short Story. [...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] |
File 770
''File 770'' is a long-running science fiction fanzine, newszine, and blog site published/administered by Mike Glyer. It has been published every year since 1978, and has won a record eight Hugo Awards for Best Fanzine, with the first win in 1984 and the most recent in 2018. History File 770 is named after the legendary room party held in Room 770 at Nolacon, the 9th World Science Fiction Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana, that upstaged the other events at the 1951 Worldcon. Glyer started ''File 770'' in 1978 as a mimeographed print fanzine to report on fan clubs, conventions, fannish projects, fans, fanzines and SF awards, with articles written in a "no-nonsense style". In the 1990s, Glyer moved production of the fanzine to computer desktop publishing, and on January 15, 2008, he began publishing ''File 770'' as a blog on the internet. A print version of ''File 770'' has been produced every year from 1978 to the present. eFanzines.com began hosting PDF versions of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Internet Speculative Fiction Database
The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) is a database of bibliographic information on genres considered speculative fiction, including science fiction and related genres such as fantasy, alternate history, and horror fiction. The ISFDB is a volunteer effort, with the database being open for moderated editing and user contributions, and a wiki that allows the database editors to coordinate with each other. the site had catalogued 2,002,324 story titles from 232,816 authors. The code for the site has been used in books and tutorials as examples of database schema and organizing content. The ISFDB database and code are available under Creative Commons licensing. The site won the Wooden Rocket Award in the Best Directory Site category in 2005. Purpose The ISFDB database indexes speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, horror, and alternate history) authors, novels, short fiction, essays, publishers, awards, and magazines in print, electronic, and audio formats. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DePauw University
DePauw University is a private liberal arts university in Greencastle, Indiana. It has an enrollment of 1,972 students. The school has a Methodist heritage and was originally known as Indiana Asbury University. DePauw is a member of both the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the North Coast Athletic Conference. The Society of Professional Journalists was founded at DePauw. History Indiana Asbury University was founded in 1837 in Greencastle, Indiana, and was named after Francis Asbury, the first American bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The people of Greencastle raised $25,000 to entice the Methodists to establish the college in Greencastle, which was little more than a village at the time. It was originally established as an all-men's school but began admitting women in 1867. In 1884 Indiana Asbury University changed its name to DePauw University in honor of Washington C. DePauw, who made a sequence of substantial donations throughout the 1870s, which culmina ... [...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 Fiction Studies
''Science Fiction Studies'' (''SFS'') is an academic journal founded in 1973 by R. D. Mullen. The journal is published three times per year at DePauw University. As the name implies, the journal publishes articles and book reviews on science fiction, but also occasionally on fantasy and horror when the topic also covers some aspect of science fiction as well. Known as one of the major academic publications of its type, ''Science Fiction Studies'' is considered the most "theoretical" of the academic journals that publish on science fiction. History ''SFS'' has had three different institutional homes during its lifetime. It was founded in 1973 at Indiana State University by the late English professor Dr. R. D. Mullen, where it remained for approximately five years. In 1978, it moved to McGill University and then to Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, where it was supported by a Canadian government grant until 1991. ''SFS'' was brought back to Indiana to DePauw University i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Nicoll
James Davis Nicoll (born March 18, 1961) is a Canadian freelance game and speculative fiction reviewer, former security guard and role-playing game store owner, and also works as a first reader for the Science Fiction Book Club. As a Usenet personality, Nicoll is known for writing a widely quoted epigram on the English language, as well as for his accounts of suffering a high number of accidents, which he has narrated over the years in Usenet groups like rec.arts.sf.written and rec.arts.sf.fandom. He is now a blogger on Dreamwidth and Facebook, and an occasional columnist on Tor.com. In 2014, he started his website, jamesdavisnicoll.com, dedicated to his book reviews of works old and new; and later added ''Young People Read Old SFF'', where his panel of younger readers read pre-1980 science fiction and fantasy, and Nicoll and his collaborators report on the younger readers' reactions. Background Nicoll was born March 18, 1961 and grew up in rural Ontario. He wrote on Us ... [...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] |
David Langford
David Rowland Langford (born 10 April 1953) is a British author, editor, and critic, largely active within the science fiction field. He publishes the science fiction fanzine and newsletter ''Ansible'', and holds the all-time record for most Hugo Awards, with a total of 29 wins. Personal background David Langford was born and grew up in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales before studying for a degree in Physics at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he first became involved in science fiction fandom. Langford is married to Hazel and is the brother of the musician and artist Jon Langford. His first job was as a weapons physicist at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston, Berkshire from 1975 to 1980. In 1985 he set up a "tiny and informally run software company" with science fiction writer Christopher Priest, called Ansible Information after Langford's news-sheet. The company has ceased trading. Increasing hearing difficulties have reduced Langford's participation i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Clute
John Frederick Clute (born 12 September 1940) is a Canadian-born author and critic specializing in science fiction and fantasy literature who has lived in both England and the United States since 1969. He has been described as "an integral part of science fiction's history"Davis, MattheJohn Clute: Yakfests of the Empyrean, ''Strange Horizons,'' 18 September 2006. and "perhaps the foremost reader-critic of sf in our time, and one of the best the genre has ever known." He was one of eight people who founded the English magazine '' Interzone'' in 1982 (the others included Malcolm Edwards, Colin Greenland, Roz Kaveney, and David Pringle). Clute's articles on speculative fiction have appeared in various publications since the 1960s. He is a co-editor of ''The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction'' (with Peter Nicholls) and of ''The Encyclopedia of Fantasy'' (with John Grant), as well as the author of ''The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Science Fiction,'' all of which won Hugo Awards for Be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Nicholls (writer)
Peter Douglas Nicholls (8 March 1939 – 6 March 2018) was an Australian literary scholar and critic. He was the creator and a co-editor of ''The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction'' with John Clute. Early career Born in Australia's state of Victoria in Melbourne, he spent two decades from 1968 to 1988 as an expatriate, first in the USA, and then the UK. Nicholls' early career was as a literary academic, originally with the University of Melbourne. He first travelled to the USA in 1968 with a Harkness Fellowship in movie making, and has scripted television documentaries. His significant contributions to science fiction scholarship and criticism began during 1971, when he became the first Administrator of the Science Fiction Foundation (UK), a title he had until 1977. He was editor of its journal, '' Foundation: The Review of Science Fiction'', from 1974 to 1978. ''The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction'' During 1979, Nicholls edited ''The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction'' (publishe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Deceivers (Bester Novel)
''The Deceivers'' is a science fiction novel by American writer Alfred Bester. It was first published in 1981 by Wallaby Books/Simon & Schuster. Synopsis Rogue Winter has superhuman powers of pattern recognition, which he uses to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend and save the solar system. Reception ''The Deceivers'' received little attention from critics; ''The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction'' later posited that this was the result of a desire to spare Bester's feelings, as the novel "is not good."Alfred Bester by Peter Nicholls; earliest version published October 13, 2011; retrieved May 23, 2019 Science fiction scholar Jad Smith has described it as a "busy, overwritten |
