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Tower Of Babylon (story)
"Tower of Babylon" is a science fantasy novelette by American writer Ted Chiang, published in 1990. The story revisits the tower of Babel myth as a construction megaproject, in a setting where the principles of pre-scientific cosmology (the geocentric model, celestial spheres, etc.) are literally true. It is Chiang's first published work. The story won the 1991 Nebula Award for Best Novelette, and was reprinted in Chiang's 2002 anthology, '' Stories of Your Life and Others''. Synopsis Hillalum is a miner from Elam who has been summoned to the Tower of Babylon, an enormous brick tower that has been in continuous construction for centuries. He and his colleagues have been hired to dig through the Vault of Heaven to discover Yahweh's creation. Hillalum alone passes safely through the Vault. After a perilous journey ever-upwards, he finds that he has reemerged back at the surface, some distance from the Tower, rather than in Heaven as expected. Reception "Tower" won the 1991 Nebu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ted Chiang
Ted Chiang (born 1967) is an American science fiction writer. His work has won four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and six Locus awards. His short story "Story of Your Life" was the basis of the film ''Arrival'' (2016). He was an artist in residence at the University of Notre Dame in 2020–2021. Early life, family and education Ted Chiang was born in 1967 in Port Jefferson, New York. His Chinese name is Chiang Feng-nan (). Both of his parents were born in Mainland China and immigrated to Taiwan with their families during the Chinese Communist Revolution before immigrating to the United States. His father, Fu-pen Chiang, is a distinguished professor of mechanical engineering at Stony Brook University. Chiang graduated from Brown University with a computer science degree. Career Chiang began submitting stories to magazines in high school. After attending the Clarion Workshop in 1989 he sold his first story, "The Tower of Babylo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nebula Award For Best Novelette
The Nebula Award for Best Novelette is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) to a science fiction or fantasy Novella#Versus novelette, novelette. A work of fiction is defined by the organization as a novelette if it is between 7,500 and 17,500 words; awards are also given out for pieces of longer lengths in the Nebula Award for Best Novel, Novel and Nebula Award for Best Novella, Novella categories, and for shorter lengths in the Nebula Award for Best Short Story, Short Story category. To be eligible for Nebula Award consideration a novelette must be published in English in the United States. Works published in English elsewhere in the world are also eligible provided they are released on either a website or in an electronic edition. The Nebula Award for Best Novelette has been awarded annually since 1966. The Nebula Awards have been described as one of "the most important of the American science fiction awards" and "the science-fiction and f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nebula Award For Best Novelette-winning Works
A nebula ('cloud' or 'fog' in Latin; pl. nebulae, nebulæ or nebulas) is a distinct luminescent part of interstellar medium, which can consist of ionized, neutral or molecular hydrogen and also cosmic dust. Nebulae are often star-forming regions, such as in the "Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula. In these regions, the formations of gas, dust, and other materials "clump" together to form denser regions, which attract further matter, and eventually will become dense enough to form stars. The remaining material is then thought to form planets and other planetary system objects. Most nebulae are of vast size; some are hundreds of light-years in diameter. A nebula that is visible to the human eye from Earth would appear larger, but no brighter, from close by. The Orion Nebula, the brightest nebula in the sky and occupying an area twice the angular diameter of the full Moon, can be viewed with the naked eye but was missed by early astronomers. Although denser than the space su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Works Originally Published In Omni (magazine)
Works may refer to: People * Caddy Works (1896–1982), American college sports coach * Samuel Works (c. 1781–1868), New York politician Albums * '' ''Works'' (Pink Floyd album)'', a Pink Floyd album from 1983 * ''Works'', a Gary Burton album from 1972 * ''Works'', a Status Quo album from 1983 * ''Works'', a John Abercrombie album from 1991 * ''Works'', a Pat Metheny album from 1994 * ''Works'', an Alan Parson Project album from 2002 * ''Works Volume 1'', a 1977 Emerson, Lake & Palmer album * ''Works Volume 2'', a 1977 Emerson, Lake & Palmer album * '' The Works'', a 1984 Queen album Other uses * Microsoft Works, a collection of office productivity programs created by Microsoft * IBM Works, an office suite for the IBM OS/2 operating system * Mount Works, Victoria Land, Antarctica See also * The Works (other) * Work (other) Work may refer to: * Work (human activity), intentional activity people perform to support themselves, others, or the community ** ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1990 Short Stories
Year 199 ( CXCIX) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was sometimes known as year 952 ''Ab urbe condita''. The denomination 199 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Roman Empire * Mesopotamia is partitioned into two Roman provinces divided by the Euphrates, Mesopotamia and Osroene. * Emperor Septimius Severus lays siege to the city-state Hatra in Central-Mesopotamia, but fails to capture the city despite breaching the walls. * Two new legions, I Parthica and III Parthica, are formed as a permanent garrison. China * Battle of Yijing: Chinese warlord Yuan Shao defeats Gongsun Zan. Korea * Geodeung succeeds Suro of Geumgwan Gaya, as king of the Korean kingdom of Gaya (traditional date). By topic Religion * Pope Zephyrinus succeeds Pope Victor I, as the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science Fiction Short Stories
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for scientific reasoning is tens of thousands of years old. The earliest written records in the history of science come from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but was preserved in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age and later by the efforts of Byzantine Greek scholars who brought Greek man ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hugo Award For Best Novelette
The Hugo Award for Best Novelette is one of the Hugo Awards given each year for science fiction or fantasy stories published or translated into English during the previous calendar year. The novelette award is available for works of fiction of between 7,500 and 17,500 words; awards are also given out in the short story, novella and novel categories. The Hugo Awards have been described as "a fine showcase for speculative fiction" and "the best known literary award for science fiction writing". The Hugo Award for Best Novelette was first awarded in 1955, and was subsequently awarded in 1956, 1958, and 1959, lapsing in 1960. The category was reinstated for 1967 through 1969, before lapsing again in 1970; after returning in 1973, it has remained to date. In addition to the regular Hugo awards, beginning in 1996 Retrospective Hugo Awards, or "Retro Hugos", have been available to be awarded for 50, 75, or 100 years prior. Retro Hugos may only be awarded for years after 1939 in which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yahweh
Yahweh *''Yahwe'', was the national god of ancient Israel and Judah. The origins of his worship reach at least to the early Iron Age, and likely to the Late Bronze Age if not somewhat earlier, and in the oldest biblical literature he possesses attributes typically ascribed to weather and war deities, fructifying the land and leading the heavenly army against Israel's enemies. The early Israelites were polytheistic and worshipped Yahweh alongside a variety of Canaanite gods and goddesses, including El, Asherah and Baal. In later centuries, El and Yahweh became conflated and El-linked epithets such as El Shaddai came to be applied to Yahweh alone, and other gods and goddesses such as Baal and Asherah were absorbed into Yahwist religion. Towards the end of the Babylonian captivity, the very existence of foreign gods was denied, and Yahweh was proclaimed as the creator of the cosmos and the one true God of all the world, giving birth to Judaism, which has 14–15 mill ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Firmament
In biblical cosmology, the firmament is the vast solid dome created by God during his creation of the world to divide the primal sea into upper and lower portions so that the dry land could appear. The concept was adopted into the subsequent Classical/Medieval model of heavenly spheres, but was dropped with advances in astronomy in the 16th and 17th centuries. Today it survives as a synonym for "sky" or "heaven". Etymology In English, the word "firmament" is recorded as early as 1250, in the ''Middle English Story of Genesis and Exodus''. It later appeared in the King James Bible. The same word is found in French and German Bible translations, all from Latin '' firmamentum'' (a firm object), used in the Vulgate (4th century). This in turn is a calque of the Greek (), also meaning a solid or firm structure (Greek = rigid), which appears in the Septuagint, the Greek translation made by Jewish scholars around 200 BCE. These words all translate the Biblical Hebrew word ''rā ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tower Of Babel
The Tower of Babel ( he, , ''Mīgdal Bāḇel'') narrative in Genesis 11:1–9 is an origin myth meant to explain why the world's peoples speak different languages. According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language and migrating eastward, comes to the land of Shinar (). There they agree to build a city and a tower with its top in the sky. Yahweh, observing their city and tower, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other, and scatters them around the world. Some modern scholars have associated the Tower of Babel with known structures, notably the Etemenanki, a ziggurat dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Marduk in Babylon. A Sumerian story with some similar elements is told in ''Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta''. Narrative Etymology The phrase "Tower of Babel" does not appear in the Bible; it is always "the city and the tower" () or just "the city" (). The original derivation of the name Babel (also the Hebrew name for B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elam
Elam (; Linear Elamite: ''hatamti''; Cuneiform Elamite: ; Sumerian: ; Akkadian: ; he, עֵילָם ''ʿēlām''; peo, 𐎢𐎺𐎩 ''hūja'') was an ancient civilization centered in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of what is now Khuzestan and Ilam Province as well as a small part of southern Iraq. The modern name ''Elam'' stems from the Sumerian transliteration ''elam(a)'', along with the later Akkadian ''elamtu'', and the Elamite ''haltamti.'' Elamite states were among the leading political forces of the Ancient Near East. In classical literature, Elam was also known as Susiana ( ; grc, Σουσιανή ''Sousiānḗ''), a name derived from its capital Susa. Elam was part of the early urbanization of the Near East during the Chalcolithic period (Copper Age). The emergence of written records from around 3000 BC also parallels Sumerian history, where slightly earlier records have been found. In the Old Elamite period ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stories Of Your Life And Others
''Stories of Your Life and Others'' is a collection of short stories by American writer Ted Chiang originally published in 2002 by Tor Books. It collects Chiang's first eight stories. All of the stories except "Liking What You See: A Documentary" were previously published individually elsewhere. It was reprinted in 2016 as ''Arrival'' to coincide with the adaptation of "Story of Your Life" as the film ''Arrival''. Chiang's second collection, '' Exhalation: Stories'' was released in 2019. Contents * "Tower of Babylon" (originally published in '' Omni'', November 1990) (Nebula Award winner) * "Understand" (originally published in '' Asimov's'', August 1991) * "Division by Zero" (originally published in '' Full Spectrum 3'', June 1991) * "Story of Your Life" (originally published in '' Starlight 2'', November 1998) (Nebula Award and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winner) * "Seventy-Two Letters" (originally published in ''Vanishing Acts'', June 2000) (Sidewise Award winner) * " Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
