|
Yellow Card Man
"Yellow Card Man" is a science fiction novelette published in 2006 by Paolo Bacigalupi. It was nominated for the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. The story serves as a prologue for Bacigalupi's novel, ''The Windup Girl''. Plot summary The story follows Tranh, the once wealthy head of the multi-national "Three Prosperities" trading company, now a refugee suffering from PTSD, who is forced to eke out a living in the slums of a future Bangkok. Genetically engineered plant pathogens have destroyed much of the world's crops, and Western biotech companies are busy selling disease-resistant seeds to third-world countries, while also re-engineering the pathogens to destroy the new plants after a few years, so that the companies can re-engineer the seeds to be resistant to the new diseases and thus repeat the cycle. Prejudice and ethnic tension have boiled over in Malaysia, resulting in the Malays slaughtering the other ethnic groups. Tranh barely escaped the mobs, having seen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paolo Bacigalupi
Paolo Tadini Bacigalupi (born August 6, 1972) is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, John W. Campbell, Compton Crook, Theodore Sturgeon, and Michael L. Printz awards, and has been nominated for the National Book Award. His fiction has appeared in '' The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction'', '' Asimov's Science Fiction'', and the environmental journal '' High Country News''. Nonfiction essays of his have appeared in Salon.com and ''High Country News'', and have been syndicated in newspapers, including the '' Idaho Statesman'', the ''Albuquerque Journal'', and the '' Salt Lake Tribune''. Bacigalupi's short fiction has been collected in the anthology ''Pump Six and Other Stories'' ( Night Shade Books, 2008). His debut novel ''The Windup Girl'', also published by Night Shade Books in September 2009, won the Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards in 2010. ''The Windup Girl'' was also named by '' Time'' as one of the T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PTSD
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental and behavioral disorder that can develop because of exposure to a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, domestic violence, or other threats on a person's life. Symptoms may include disturbing thoughts, feelings, or dreams related to the events, mental or physical distress to trauma-related cues, attempts to avoid trauma-related cues, alterations in the way a person thinks and feels, and an increase in the fight-or-flight response. These symptoms last for more than a month after the event. Young children are less likely to show distress but instead may express their memories through play. A person with PTSD is at a higher risk of suicide and intentional self-harm. Most people who experience traumatic events do not develop PTSD. People who experience interpersonal violence such as rape, other sexual assaults, being kidnapped, stalking, physical abuse by an intimate partner, an ... [...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 m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Future History
A future history is a postulated history of the future and is used by authors of science fiction and other speculative fiction to construct a common background for fiction. Sometimes the author publishes a timeline of events in the history, while other times the reader can reconstruct the order of the stories from information provided therein. Background The term appears to have been coined by John W. Campbell, Jr., the editor of '' Astounding Science Fiction'', in the February 1941 issue of that magazine, in reference to Robert A. Heinlein's '' Future History''. Neil R. Jones is generally credited as the first author to create a future history.Ashley, M. (April, 1989). The Immortal Professor, Astro Adventures No.7, p.6. A set of stories which share a backdrop but are not really concerned with the sequence of history in their universe are rarely considered future histories. For example, neither Lois McMaster Bujold's '' Vorkosigan Saga'' nor George R. R. Martin's 197 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
11/22/63
''11/22/63'' is a novel by Stephen King about a time traveller who attempts to prevent the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy, which occurred on November 22, 1963 (the novel's titular date). It is the 60th book published by Stephen King, his 49th novel and the 42nd under his own name. The novel was announced on King's official site on March 2, 2011.Kellogg, Carolyn"Stephen King follows Delillo, Stone into JFK myth" ''Los Angeles Times'', March 3, 2011 A short excerpt was released online on June 1, 2011, and another excerpt was published in the October 28, 2011, issue of ''Entertainment Weekly''. The novel was published on November 8, 2011 and quickly became a number-one bestseller. It stayed on ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list for 16 weeks. ''11/22/63'' won the 2011 ''Los Angeles Times'' Book Prize for Best Mystery/Thriller and the 2012 International Thriller Writers Award for Best Novel, and was nominated for the 2012 British Fantasy Award for Bes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Memento Mori
''Memento mori'' (Latin for 'remember that you ave todie'Literally 'remember (that you have) to die' Oxford English Dictionary, Third Edition, June 2001.) is an artistic or symbolic trope acting as a reminder of the inevitability of . The concept has its roots in the philosophers of |
Cutting In Line
Cutting in line, also known as line/queue jumping, butting, barging, budging, bunking, skipping, breaking, ditching, shorting, pushing in, or cutsies, is the act of entering a queue or line at any position other than the end. The act is extremely stigmatized in most human cultures and stands in stark contrast to the normal policy of first come, first served that governs most queue areas. Reaction A negative and very assertive response from the rear of the line is expected when someone has cut in line up ahead under any circumstances in virtually all cultures. According to one study, a person cutting in line has a 54% chance that others in the line will object. With two people cutting in line, there is a 91.3% chance that someone will object. The proportion of people objecting from anywhere behind the cutter is 73.3%, with the person immediately behind the point of intrusion objecting most frequently. Nevertheless, physical altercation resulting from cutting is rare. It was repo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rolex
Rolex SA () is a British-founded Swiss watch designer and manufacturer based in Geneva, Switzerland. Founded in 1905 as ''Wilsdorf and Davis'' by Hans Wilsdorf and Alfred Davis in London, the company registered ''Rolex'' as the brand name of its watches in 1908 and became ''Rolex Watch Co. Ltd.'' in 1915. After World War I, the company moved its base of operations to Geneva because of the unfavorable economy in the United Kingdom. In 1920, Hans Wilsdorf registered ''Montres Rolex SA'' in Geneva as the new company name (''montre'' is French for wristwatch); it later became ''Rolex SA''. Since 1960, the company has been owned by the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, a private family trust. Rolex SA and its subsidiary Montres Tudor SA design, make, distribute, and service wristwatches sold under the Rolex and Tudor brands. History Early history Alfred Davis and his brother-in-law Hans Wilsdorf founded ''Wilsdorf and Davis'', the company that would eventually become ''Rolex SA'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bangkok
Bangkok, officially known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estimated population of 10.539 million as of 2020, 15.3 percent of the country's population. Over 14 million people (22.2 percent) lived within the surrounding Bangkok Metropolitan Region at the 2010 census, making Bangkok an extreme primate city, dwarfing Thailand's other urban centres in both size and importance to the national economy. Bangkok traces its roots to a small trading post during the Ayutthaya Kingdom in the 15th century, which eventually grew and became the site of two capital cities, Thonburi in 1768 and Rattanakosin in 1782. Bangkok was at the heart of the modernization of Siam, later renamed Thailand, during the late-19th century, as the country faced pressures from the West. The city was at the centre of Thailand's political struggl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Windup Girl
''The Windup Girl'' is a biopunk science fiction novel by American writer Paolo Bacigalupi. It was his debut novel and was published by Night Shade Books on September 1, 2009. The novel is set in a future Thailand and covers a number of contemporary issues such as global warming and biotechnology. ''The Windup Girl'' was named as the ninth best fiction book of 2009 by ''TIME'' magazine. It won the 2010 Nebula Award and the 2010 Hugo Award (tied with '' The City & the City'' by China Miéville), both for best novel. The book also won the 2010 Campbell Memorial Award, the 2010 Compton Crook Award and the 2010 Locus Award for best first novel. Setting ''The Windup Girl'' is set in 23rd-century Thailand. Global warming has raised the levels of world's oceans, carbon fuel sources have become depleted, and manually wound springs are used as energy storage devices. Biotechnology is dominant and megacorporations (called ''calorie companies'') like AgriGen, PurCal and RedStar control ... [...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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prologue
A prologue or prolog (from Greek πρόλογος ''prólogos'', from πρό ''pró'', "before" and λόγος ''lógos'', "word") is an opening to a story that establishes the context and gives background details, often some earlier story that ties into the main one, and other miscellaneous information. The Ancient Greek ''prólogos'' included the modern meaning of ''prologue'', but was of wider significance, more like the meaning of preface. The importance, therefore, of the prologue in Greek drama was very great; it sometimes almost took the place of a romance, to which, or to an episode in which, the play itself succeeded. Latin On the Latin stage the prologue was often more elaborate than it was in Athens, and in the careful composition of the poems which Plautus prefixes to his plays we see what importance he gave to this portion of the entertainment; sometimes, as in the preface to the '' Rudens'', Plautus rises to the height of his genius in his adroit and romantic pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> PTSD")
.jpg "Click for more on -> Bangkok")
