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Wiktor Żwikiewicz
Wiktor Żwikiewicz (19 March 1950) is a Polish writer of science fiction. Biography in the 1970s and 1980s he published a number of short stories, collected in four anthologies, as well as for novels. He also authored two theatre plays. His works have been translated to Bulgarian, Czech, German, Russian, Slovakian and Hungarian languages. At a later point in his life, he became a homeless person. By 2011 he was living in a social housing in Bydgoszcz. He suffered a stroke in 2016. Works He has been called a "legend" of Polish science fiction. In addition to being a writer, he is also an artist. He usually illustrated the covers of his books himself, and provided cover art for books of several other author. His style of writing is rather unique and may be viewed as a bit cryptic. He often explores technical fantasmagory and poetical descriptions of his very own. He can be considered a visionary of the Internet in the communistic Polish People's Republic hidden behind the I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Infobox writer may be used to summarize information about a person who is a writer/author (includes screenwriters). If the writer-specific fields here are not needed, consider using the more general ; other infoboxes there can be found in :People and person infobox templates. This template may also be used as a module (or sub-template) of ; see WikiProject Infoboxes/embed for guidance on such usage. Syntax The infobox may be added by pasting the template as shown below into an article. All fields are optional. Any unused parameter names can be left blank or omitted. Parameters Please remove any parameters from an article's infobox that are unlikely to be used. All parameters are optional. Unless otherwise specified, if a parameter has multiple values, they should be comma-separated using the template: : which produces: : , language= If any of the individual values contain commas already, add to use semi-colons as separators: : which produces: : , ps ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bydgoszcz
Bydgoszcz ( , , ; german: Bromberg) is a city in northern Poland, straddling the meeting of the River Vistula with its left-bank tributary, the Brda. With a city population of 339,053 as of December 2021 and an urban agglomeration with more than 470,000 inhabitants, Bydgoszcz is the eighth-largest city in Poland. It is the seat of Bydgoszcz County and the co-capital, with Toruń, of the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship. The city is part of the Bydgoszcz–Toruń metropolitan area, which totals over 850,000 inhabitants. Bydgoszcz is the seat of Casimir the Great University, University of Technology and Life Sciences and a conservatory, as well as the Medical College of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. It also hosts the Pomeranian Philharmonic concert hall, the Opera Nova opera house, and Bydgoszcz Airport. Being between the Vistula and Oder (Odra in Polish) rivers, and by the Bydgoszcz Canal, the city is connected via the Noteć, Warta, Elbe and German canals with t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous member state of the European Union. Warsaw is the nation's capital and largest metropolis. Other major cities include Kraków, Wrocław, Łódź, Poznań, Gdańsk, and Szczecin. Poland has a temperate transitional climate and its territory traverses the Central European Plain, extending from Baltic Sea in the north to Sudeten and Carpathian Mountains in the south. The longest Polish river is the Vistula, and Poland's highest point is Mount Rysy, situated in the Tatra mountain range of the Carpathians. The country is bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukraine to the east, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to the south, and Germany to the west. It also shares maritime boundaries with Denmark and Sweden. ... [...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
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] |
Homelessness
Homelessness or houselessness – also known as a state of being unhoused or unsheltered – is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and adequate housing. People can be categorized as homeless if they are: * living on the streets, also known as rough sleeping (primary homelessness); * moving between temporary shelters, including houses of friends, family, and emergency accommodation (secondary homelessness); and * living in private boarding houses without a private bathroom or security of tenure (tertiary homelessness). * have no permanent house or place to live safely * Internally Displaced Persons, persons compelled to leave their places of domicile, who remain as refugees within their country's borders. The rights of people experiencing homelessness also varies from country to country. United States government homeless enumeration studies also include people who sleep in a public or private place, which is not designed for use as a regular sleeping accommodation for hu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Public Housing
Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is usually owned by a government authority, either central or local. Although the common goal of public housing is to provide affordable housing, the details, terminology, definitions of poverty, and other criteria for allocation vary within different contexts. Public housing developments are classified as housing projects that are owned by a city's Housing authority or Federally subsidized public housing operated through HUD. Social housing is any rental housing that may be owned and managed by the state, by non-profit organizations, or by a combination of the two, usually with the aim of providing affordable housing. Social housing is generally rationed by a government through some form of means-testing or through administrative measures of housing need. One can regard social housing as a potential remedy for housing inequality. Private housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is owned by an i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polish People's Republic
The Polish People's Republic ( pl, Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL) was a country in Central Europe that existed from 1947 to 1989 as the predecessor of the modern Republic of Poland. With a population of approximately 37.9 million near the end of its existence, it was the second-most populous communist and Eastern Bloc country in Europe. It was also one of the main signatories of the Warsaw Pact alliance. The largest city and official capital since 1947 was Warsaw, followed by the industrial city of Łódź and cultural city of Kraków. The country was bordered by the Baltic Sea to the north, the Soviet Union to the east, Czechoslovakia to the south, and East Germany to the west. The Polish People's Republic was a socialist one-party state, with a unitary Marxist–Leninist government headed by the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR). The country's official name was the "Republic of Poland" (') between 1947 and 1952 in accordance with the transitional Small Constitutio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was the political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West, its allies and neutral states. On the east side of the Iron Curtain were the countries that were connected to or influenced by the Soviet Union, while on the west side were the countries that were NATO members, or connected to or influenced by the United States; or nominally neutral. Separate international economic and military alliances were developed on each side of the Iron Curtain. It later became a term for the physical barrier of fences, walls, minefields, and watchtowers that divided the "east" and "west". The Berlin Wall was also part of this physical barrier. The nations to the east of the Iron Curtain were Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blindsight (Watts Novel)
''Blindsight'' is a hard science fiction novel by Canadian writer Peter Watts, published by Tor Books in 2006. It won the Seiun Award for best translated novel and was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. The story follows a crew of astronauts sent out as the third wave, following two series of probes, to investigate a trans-Neptunian Kuiper belt comet dubbed "Burns-Caulfield" that has been found to be transmitting an unidentified radio signal to an as-yet unknown destination elsewhere in the Solar System, followed by their subsequent first contact. The novel explores themes of identity, consciousness, free will, artificial intelligence, neurology, and game theory as well as evolution and biology. ''Blindsight'' is available online under a Creative Commons license. Its sequel (or " sidequel"), '' Echopraxia'', came out in 2014. Plot In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Echopraxia (novel)
''Echopraxia'' is a hard science fiction novel by Canadian writer Peter Watts. It is a "sidequel" to his 2006 novel, ''Blindsight'', and the two novels make up the ''Firefall'' series. ''Echopraxia'' follows the story of a biologist who gets caught up in a voyage into the heart of the Solar System among members of a transcendentalist monastic order and allies (including a vampire escaped from a research facility and her cadre of zombified soldiers) to investigate a mysterious signal seemingly coming from the mission sent to initiate first contact in Watts' previous novel. The cover art is by Richard Anderson. The title refers to a psychological condition in which a person involuntarily mimics actions they observe. In 2014, Watts participated in an online Q&A session on Reddit, where he personally answered questions about the novel. Synopsis The story, set on the eve of the twenty-second century, follows a parasitologist named Daniel Brücks, who accidentally finds himself t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Watts (author)
Peter Watts (born January 25, 1958) is a Canadian science fiction author. He specializes in hard science fiction. He earned a Ph.D from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1991, from the Department of Zoology and Resource Ecology. He went on to hold several academic research and teaching positions, and worked as a marine-mammal biologist. He began publishing fiction around the time he finished graduate school. Career His first novel ''Starfish'' (1999) reintroduced Lenie Clarke from his short story, "A Niche" (1990); Clarke is a deep-ocean power station worker physically altered for underwater living and the main character in the sequels: ''Maelstrom'' (2001), ''βehemoth: β-Max'' (2004) and ''βehemoth: Seppuku'' (2005). The last two volumes constitute one novel, but were published separately for commercial reasons. ''Starfish'', ''Maelstrom'', and ''βehemoth'' make up a trilogy usually referred to as "Rifters" after the modified humans de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
