The State Of The Art
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The State Of The Art
''The State of the Art'' is a short story collection by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, first published in 1991. The collection includes some stories originally published under his other byline "Iain Banks", as well as the title novella and others set in Banks's Culture fictional universe. The non-SF stories in the collection are the only non-SF stories published under his Iain M. Banks name. Editions The collection was published in the US in 2004 by Night Shade Books, in hardback () and limited editions (). The limited edition contains work by Banks not found in the UK version. A Trade Paperback edition was printed in Canada in 2007 by Night Shade Books, () It contains the additional text 'A Few Notes on the Culture'. Contents * "Road of Skulls". Originally published in the anthology ''20 under 35'', Peter Straus (ed.) 1988, Sceptre, . *:Two men in a carriage travel over the eponymous Road of Skulls, to reach a distant City that seems to be constantly retreating and producin ...
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Roz Kaveney
Roz Kaveney (born 9 July 1949) is a British writer, critic, and poet, best known for her critical works about pop culture and for being a core member of the Midnight Rose collective. Kaveney's works include fiction and non-fiction, poetry, reviewing, and editing. Kaveney is also a transgender rights activist. She has contributed to several newspapers such as ''The Independent'' and ''The Guardian''. She is also a founding member of Feminists Against Censorship and a former deputy chair of Liberty. She was deputy editor of the transgender-related magazine ''META''. Early life and transition Kaveney attended Pembroke College, Oxford, where she participated in a poetry group that had a particular interest in Martian poetry and shared a flat with Christopher Reid. Kaveney is a transgender woman, who began transition in her last year at Oxford. After being "persuaded to desist by feminist friends", Kaveney delayed her transition for several years. She eventually transitioned a ...
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Paul Cornell
Paul Douglas Cornell (born 18 July 1967) is a British writer best known for his work in television drama as well as ''Doctor Who'' fiction, and as the creator of one of the Doctor's spin-off companions, Bernice Summerfield. As well as ''Doctor Who'', other British television dramas for which he has written include ''Robin Hood'', '' Primeval'', '' Casualty'', ''Holby City'' and ''Coronation Street''. For US television, he has contributed an episode to the modern-day set Sherlock Holmes series ''Elementary''. Cornell has also written for a number of British comics, as well as Marvel Comics and DC Comics in America, and has had six original novels published in addition to his ''Doctor Who'' fiction. Career Already known in ''Doctor Who'' fan circles, Cornell's professional writing career began in 1990 when he was a winner in a young writers' competition and his entry, ''Kingdom Come'', was produced and screened on BBC Two. Soon after, he wrote '' Timewyrm: Revelation'', a novel ...
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Susan Sheridan
Susan Haydn Thomas (18 March 1947 – 8 August 2015) better known as Susan Sheridan, was an English voice actress. Her roles included Noddy in '' Noddy's Toyland Adventures'', Princess Sylvia in '' Muzzy in Gondoland'', Trillian in the BBC radio series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' and Princess Eilonwy in the animated film '' The Black Cauldron''. Early and personal life Sheridan trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Sheridan married the musician Max Brittain and had three daughters. She died from breast cancer on 8 August 2015, aged 68. Voice roles Sheridan's voice roles include; *''Alex Builds His Farm'' - Alex *''Fire Tripper (English version)'' - Shu *'' Moomin (English dub)'' - Moomin *'' Noddy's Toyland Adventures'' - Noddy, Tessie Bear and other character voices *''Budgie the Little Helicopter'' - Additional characters *'' The Little Polar Bear'' *''Round the Bend'' *''The Goose Girl'' *'' The Family-Ness'' *'' Jimbo and the Jet-Set'' *'' Albe ...
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Bill Paterson (actor)
William Tulloch Paterson (born 3 June 1945) is a Scottish actor with a career in theatre, film, television and radio. Throughout his career he has appeared regularly in radio drama and provided the narration for a large number of documentaries. He has appeared in films and TV series including '' Comfort and Joy'' (1984), ''Auf Wiedersehen, Pet'' (1986), ''Truly, Madly, Deeply'' (1990), ''Wives and Daughters'' (1999), '' Sea of Souls'' (2004–2007), ''Amazing Grace'' (2006), ''Miss Potter'' (2006), ''Little Dorrit'' (2008), '' Doctor Who'' (2010), '' Outlander'' (2014), ''Fleabag'' (2016–2019), ''Inside No. 9'' (2018), ''Good Omens'' (2019), and '' Brassic'' (2020). He is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Scottish BAFTAs. Early life William Tulloch Paterson was born in Glasgow on 3 June 1945. Paterson was raised in Dennistoun by his father, a plumber, and his mother, a hairdresser. He states that his interest in acting began with a school trip to the Cit ...
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Betelgeuse
Betelgeuse is a red supergiant of spectral type M1-2 and one of the largest stars visible to the naked eye. It is usually the tenth-brightest star in the night sky and, after Rigel, the second-brightest in the constellation of Orion. It is a distinctly reddish, semiregular variable star whose apparent magnitude, varying between +0.0 and +1.6, has the widest range displayed by any first-magnitude star. At near-infrared wavelengths, Betelgeuse is the brightest star in the night sky. Its Bayer designation is α Orionis, Latinised to Alpha Orionis and abbreviated Alpha Ori or α Ori. If it were at the center of our Solar System, its surface would lie beyond the asteroid belt and it would engulf the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Nevertheless, there are several even larger stars in the Milky Way, including supergiants like Mu Cephei and the peculiar hypergiant, VY Canis Majoris. Calculations of Betelgeuse's mass range from slightly ...
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Electromagnetic Spectrum
The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of frequencies (the spectrum) of electromagnetic radiation and their respective wavelengths and photon energies. The electromagnetic spectrum covers electromagnetic waves with frequencies ranging from below one hertz to above 1025 hertz, corresponding to wavelengths from thousands of kilometers down to a fraction of the size of an atomic nucleus. This frequency range is divided into separate bands, and the electromagnetic waves within each frequency band are called by different names; beginning at the low frequency (long wavelength) end of the spectrum these are: radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays at the high-frequency (short wavelength) end. The electromagnetic waves in each of these bands have different characteristics, such as how they are produced, how they interact with matter, and their practical applications. There is no known limit for long and short wavelengths. Extre ...
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Space Oddity
"Space Oddity" is a song by English singer-songwriter David Bowie. It was first released on 11 July 1969 by Philips Records as a 7-inch single, then as the opening track of his second studio album ''David Bowie''. After the commercial failure of his self-titled debut album in 1967, Bowie's manager Kenneth Pitt commissioned '' Love You till Tuesday'', a promotional film intended to introduce Bowie to a larger audience. For the film, Bowie wrote "Space Oddity", a tale about a fictional astronaut named Major Tom; its title and subject matter were partly inspired by Stanley Kubrick's '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'' (1968) and Bowie's feelings of alienation at that point in his career. One of the most musically complex songs Bowie had written up to that point, it represented a change from the music hall-influenced sound of his debut to a sound akin to psychedelic folk and inspired by the Bee Gees. "Space Oddity" was demoed in early 1969 before the ''Love You till Tuesday'' ve ...
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David Bowie
David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer-songwriter and actor. A leading figure in the music industry, he is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. Bowie was acclaimed by critics and musicians, particularly for his innovative work during the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, and his music and stagecraft had a significant impact on popular music. Bowie developed an interest in music from an early age. He studied art, music and design before embarking on a professional career as a musician in 1963. "Space Oddity", released in 1969, was his first top-five entry on the UK Singles Chart. After a period of experimentation, he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with his flamboyant and androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust. The character was spearheaded by the success of Bowie's single " Starman" and album '' The Rise and Fall of Zi ...
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Black Hole
A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. The boundary of no escape is called the event horizon. Although it has a great effect on the fate and circumstances of an object crossing it, it has no locally detectable features according to general relativity. In many ways, a black hole acts like an ideal black body, as it reflects no light. Moreover, quantum field theory in curved spacetime predicts that event horizons emit Hawking radiation, with the same spectrum as a black body of a temperature inversely proportional to its mass. This temperature is of the order of billionths of a kelvin for stellar black holes, making it essentially impossible to observe directly. Objects whose gravitational fields are too strong for light to escape were fir ...
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Star Trek
''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into various films, television series, video games, novels, and comic books. With an estimated $10.6 billion in revenue, it is one of the most recognizable and highest-grossing media franchises of all time. The franchise began with '' Star Trek: The Original Series'', which debuted in the US on September 8, 1966 and aired for three seasons on NBC. It was first broadcast on September 6, 1966 on Canada's CTV network. It followed the voyages of the crew of the starship USS ''Enterprise'', a space exploration vessel built by the United Federation of Planets in the 23rd century, on a mission "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before". In creating ''Star Trek'', Roddenber ...
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Pan Am Flight 103
Pan Am Flight 103 was a regularly scheduled Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit via a stopover in London and another in New York City. The transatlantic leg of the route was operated by ''Clipper Maid of the Seas'', a Boeing 747-121 registered N739PA. Shortly after 19:00 on 21 December 1988, while the aircraft was in flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, it was destroyed by a bomb that had been planted on board, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew in what became known as the Lockerbie bombing. Large sections of the aircraft crashed in a residential street in Lockerbie, killing 11 residents. With a total of 270 fatalities, it is the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United Kingdom, as well as its deadliest aviation disaster. Following a three-year joint investigation by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), arrest warrants were issued for two Libyan nationals in November 1991. In 1999, ...
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