1.
The War of the Worlds
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The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells first serialised in 1897 in the UK by Pearsons Magazine and in the US by Cosmopolitan magazine. The novels first appearance in hardcover was in 1898 from publisher William Heinemann of London, written between 1895 and 1897, it is one of the earliest stories that detail a conflict between mankind and an extraterrestrial race. The novel is the narrative of both an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and of his younger brother in London as southern England is invaded by Martians. The novel is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction canon, the plot has been related to invasion literature of the time. The novel has been interpreted as a commentary on evolutionary theory, British imperialism. At the time of publication, it was classified as a scientific romance and it has even influenced the work of scientists, notably Robert Goddard, who invented both the liquid fuelled rocket and multistage rocket, which resulted in the Apollo 11 moon landing 71 years later. The narrative opens in an observatory at Ottershaw where explosions are seen on the surface of planet Mars. Later a meteor lands on Horsell Common, near the unnamed narrators home in Woking, the narrator finds them at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous. They briefly emerge, have difficulty in coping with the Earths atmosphere, a human deputation approaches the cylinder with a white flag, but the Martians incinerate them and others nearby with a heat-ray before beginning to assemble their machinery. Military forces arrive that night to surround the common, including Maxim guns, the population of Woking and the surrounding villages are reassured by the presence of the military. A tense day begins, with anticipation of military action by the narrator. On the road during the height of the storm, he has his first terrifying sight of a fast-moving Martian fighting-machine, in panic he crashes the horse cart, barely escaping detection. He discovers the Martians have assembled towering three-legged fighting-machines, each armed with a heat-ray and a chemical weapon and these tripods have wiped out the army units positioned around the cylinder and attacked and destroyed most of Woking. The two try to escape via Byfleet just after dawn, but are separated at the Shepperton to Weybridge Ferry during a Martian afternoon attack on Shepperton and this gives the authorities precious hours to form a defence-line covering London. The brother encounters Mrs. Elphinstone and her younger sister-in-law, just in time to help fend off three men who are trying to rob them. Since Mrs. Elphinstones husband is missing, the three continue on together, after a terrifying struggle to cross a streaming mass of refugees on the road at Barnet, they head eastward. Two days later, at Chelmsford, their pony is confiscated for food by the local Committee of Public Supply and they press on to Tillingham and the sea. There they manage to buy passage to the Continent on a paddle steamer
2.
Cryptids
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While biologists regularly identify new species, cryptozoologists focus on entities mentioned in the folklore record. Cryptozoologists may consider any figure from folklore to be a cryptid after the term cryptozoology, the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun cryptid as an animal whose existence or survival to the present day is disputed or unsubstantiated, any animal of interest to a cryptozoologist. Some dictionaries and encyclopedias define the term cryptid as an animal whose existence is questionable, well-known examples include the Yeti in the Himalayas, the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland, Sasquatch in North America, and chupacabras in the Americas. Additionally, Eberhart argues for six exclusions from classification as a cryptid, cryptids must be big, weird, dangerous or significant to humans in some way. Someone needs to observe an animal and someone else needs to discredit the sighting. Cryptozoologists function as interventionists between witnesses and skeptical scientists, bizarre humans Angels or demons the paranormal or supernatural is admitted only if it has an animal shape. Aliens arrived a long ago and thus classify as residents. Searching For Hidden Animals, An Inquiry into Zoological Mysteries, Eberhart, George M. Mysterious Creatures, A Guide to Cryptozoology
3.
Extraterrestrial life
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Extraterrestrial life, also called alien life, is life that does not originate from Earth. These hypothetical life forms may range from simple single-celled organisms to beings with civilizations far more advanced than humanity, although many scientists expect extraterrestrial life to exist in some form, there is no evidence for its existence to date. The Drake equation speculates about the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, the science of extraterrestrial life in all its forms is known as exobiology. The science of astrobiology considers life on Earth as well, in 2015, remains of biotic life were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia, when the young Earth was about 400 million years old. According to one of the researchers, If life arose relatively quickly on Earth and it has also played a major role in works of science fiction. Over the years, science fiction works have increased the publics interest in the possibility of extraterrestrial life, some encourage aggressive methods to try for contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life, whereas others argue that it might be dangerous to actively call attention to Earth. Alien life, such as microorganisms, has been hypothesized to exist in the Solar System and this hypothesis relies on the vast size and consistent physical laws of the observable universe. The chemistry of life may have begun shortly after the Big Bang,13.8 billion years ago, Life may have emerged independently at many places throughout the universe. Alternatively, life may have formed less frequently, then spread—by meteoroids, in any case, complex organic molecules may have formed in the protoplanetary disk of dust grains surrounding the Sun before the formation of Earth. According to these studies, this process may occur outside Earth on several planets and moons of the Solar System, since the 1950s, scientists have argued the idea that habitable zones around stars are the most likely places to find life. The nearest such planet may be 12 light-years away, according to the scientists, astrobiologists have also considered a follow the energy view of potential habitats. Life on Earth requires water as its solvent in which biochemical reactions take place, More generally, life based on ammonia has been suggested, though this solvent appears less suitable than water. It is also conceivable that there are forms of life whose solvent is a liquid hydrocarbon, about 29 chemical elements play an active positive role in living organisms on Earth. About 95% of this matter is built upon only six elements, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus. These six elements form the building blocks of virtually all life on Earth. The unique characteristics of carbon make it unlikely that it could be replaced, even on another planet, the carbon atom has the unique ability to make four strong chemical bonds with other atoms, including other carbon atoms. These covalent bonds have a direction in space, so that carbon atoms can form the skeletons of complex 3-dimensional structures with definite architectures such as nucleic acids, carbon forms more compounds than all other elements combined. The great versatility of the atom makes it the element most likely to provide the bases—even exotic ones—for the chemical composition of life on other planets
4.
Science fiction
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Science fiction often explores the potential consequences of scientific and other innovations, and has been called a literature of ideas. Science fiction is difficult to define, as it includes a range of subgenres and themes. Author and editor Damon Knight summed up the difficulty, saying science fiction is what we point to when we say it, a definition echoed by author Mark C. Glassy, who argues that the definition of science fiction is like the definition of pornography, you do not know what it is, in 1970 or 1971William Atheling Jr. According to science fiction writer Robert A, rod Serlings definition is fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science fiction is the improbable made possible, Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternative possible worlds or futures. Science fiction elements include, A time setting in the future, in alternative timelines, a spatial setting or scenes in outer space, on other worlds, or on subterranean earth. Characters that include aliens, mutants, androids, or humanoid robots, futuristic or plausible technology such as ray guns, teleportation machines, and humanoid computers. Scientific principles that are new or that contradict accepted physical laws, for time travel, wormholes. New and different political or social systems, e. g. utopian, dystopian, post-scarcity, paranormal abilities such as mind control, telepathy, telekinesis Other universes or dimensions and travel between them. A product of the budding Age of Reason and the development of science itself. Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan considered Keplers work the first science fiction story and it depicts a journey to the Moon and how the Earths motion is seen from there. Later, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story about a flight to the moon, more examples appeared throughout the 19th century. Wells The War of the Worlds describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians using tripod fighting machines equipped with advanced weaponry and it is a seminal depiction of an alien invasion of Earth. In the late 19th century, the scientific romance was used in Britain to describe much of this fiction. This produced additional offshoots, such as the 1884 novella Flatland, the term would continue to be used into the early 20th century for writers such as Olaf Stapledon. In the early 20th century, pulp magazines helped develop a new generation of mainly American SF writers, influenced by Hugo Gernsback, the founder of Amazing Stories magazine. In 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs published A Princess of Mars, the first of his series of Barsoom novels, situated on Mars
5.
True History
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Written in the 2nd century, the novel has been referred to as the first known text that could be called science fiction. The work was intended by Lucian as a satire against contemporary and ancient sources, Lucians True Stories eludes a clear-cut literary classification. This island is home to a river of wine filled with fish and bears, shortly after leaving the island, they are lifted up by a whirlwind and after seven days deposited on the Moon. Unusually, the Sun, Moon, stars and planets are portrayed as locales, each with its unique geographic details, the war is finally won by the Suns armies clouding the Moon over. Details of the Moon follow, there are no women, after returning to Earth, the adventurers become trapped in a giant whale, inside the 200-mile-long animal, there live many groups of people whom they rout in war. They also reach a sea of milk, an island of cheese, there Lucian meets the heroes of the Trojan War, other mythical men and animals, and even Homer. They find Herodotus being eternally punished for the lies he published in his Histories, after leaving the Island of the Blessed, they deliver a letter to Calypso given to them by Odysseus explaining that he wishes he had stayed with her so he could have lived eternally. They then discover a chasm in the Ocean, but eventually sail around it, discover a far-off continent, the book ends rather abruptly with Lucian saying that their adventure there will be the subject of following books. In one view Lucian intended his story to be a form of literary criticism and he mentions the tales of Ctesias, Iambulus, and Homer and states that what did surprise me was their supposition that nobody would notice they were lying. Many characters and events are exaggerated to ridiculous ends to mock the original tellings, reardon, above all, it is a parody of literary liars like Homer and Herodotus. So my readers must not believe a word I say and he justifies the title by arguing that his is the only truthful mythological story ever written, inasmuch as it is the only one that admits that it is all lies. He also promises a sequel but it is not known if such a sequel exists, contrary to some classicists, modern science fiction critics do not necessarily view the satirical streak of the story as conflicting with modern notions of science fiction. The estranging feel of the story as a defining SF element has also been noted, once upon a time I gathered together the poorest people in my kingdom and undertook to plant a colony on the Morning Star which was empty and uninhabited. Phaethon out of jealousy thwarted the colonization, meeting us halfway at the head of his dragoons, at that time we were beaten, for we were not a match for them in strength, and we retreated. Now, however, I desire to make war again and plant the colony, modern equivalents, combining science fiction and parody in equal measure, may be found in Voltaires Micromégas and the works of Douglas Adams. History of science fiction Moon in art and literature Meropis Fredericks, “Lucians True History as SF”, Science Fiction Studies, Vol.3, No. Georgiadou, Aristoula & Larmour, David H. J. “Lucians Science Fiction Novel True Histories, interpretation and Commentary“, Mnemosyne Supplement 179, Leiden 1998, ISBN 90-04-10667-7. Grewell, Greg, “Colonizing the Universe, Science Fictions Then, Now, “The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction”, Publisher, Viking 1988, ISBN 978-0-670-81041-3, p.249
6.
Lucian of Samosata
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Lucian of Samosata was a rhetorician and satirist who wrote in the Greek language during the Second Sophistic. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature, Lucian wrote exclusively in ancient Greek. He wrote mainly in the Attic dialect, but On the Syrian Goddess, few details of Lucians life can be verified with any degree of accuracy, though clues can be found in writings attributed to him. In several works he claims to have born in Samosata, in the former kingdom of Commagene. His depictions of the processes involved in the diverse and dynamic cult have many significant parallels to Syrias material culture. On the Syrian Goddess parodies the Greek view of foreigners as barbarous, while the narrator concludes that the Syrians, throughout the account, the narrator often conflates the terms Assyrian and Syrian. In The Syrian Goddess, the claims to be an Assyrian himself. In the final paragraph of the work, the describes a ritual in which initiates would dedicate a lock of their hair to Hippolytus as part of a pre-marital coming-of-age ritual. The narrator comments, as rendered in Strong and Garstangs 1913 translation, I performed this act myself when a youth, Lucians claim in Double Indictment to be a native speaker of a barbarian tongue has been suggested to refer Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic. A more likely interpretation is that he is referring to speaking a variety of Greek. It has been suggested that in referring to himself as a barbarian, he was from the Semitic and his name added lustre to any entertaining and sarcastic essay, more than 150 surviving manuscripts attest to his continued popularity. The first printed edition of a selection of his works was issued at Florence in 1499 and his best known works are A True Story, and Dialogues of the Gods and Dialogues of the Dead. Lucian was trained as a rhetorician, a vocation whose practitioners pleaded in court, composed pleas for others, Lucians practice was to travel about, giving amusing discourses and witty lectures improvised on the spot, somewhat as a rhapsode had done in declaiming poetry at an earlier period. In this way Lucian travelled through Ionia and mainland Greece, to Italy and even to Gaul, there are 80 surviving works attributed to Lucian. He wrote in a variety of styles which included comic dialogues, rhetorical essays, Lucian was also one of the earliest novelists in Western civilization. In A True Story, a narrative work written in prose, he parodies some of the fantastic tales told by Homer in the Odyssey. He anticipated modern fictional themes like voyages to the moon and Venus, extraterrestrial life and his novel is widely regarded as an early, if not the earliest science fiction work. Lucians On Dance is important for the history of dance as it is one of very few literary discussions of dance - specifically pantomime - that treats Roman dance in detail
7.
Unidentified flying object
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An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, UFOs are often identified after their sighting. Sometimes, however, UFOs cannot be identified because of the low quality of evidence related to their sightings, during the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as flying saucers or flying discs. The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit, the Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as An unidentified flying object, a flying saucer. The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe, the acronym UFO was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAFs official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, Obviously the term flying saucer is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape, for this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name, unidentified flying objects. Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include flying flapjack, flying disc, unexplained flying discs, unidentifiable object, the phrase flying saucer had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph, at the time, he claimed he described the objects flying in a saucer-like fashion, leading to newspaper accounts of flying saucers and flying discs. In popular usage, the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft, between 5% and 20% of reported sightings are not explained, and therefore can be classified as unidentified in the strictest sense. The term Ufology is used to describe the efforts of those who study reports. UFOs have become a prevalent theme in culture, and the social phenomena have been the subject of academic research in sociology and psychology. Unexplained aerial observations have been reported throughout history, an example is Halleys Comet, which was recorded first by Chinese astronomers in 240 BC and possibly as early as 467 BC. Such sightings throughout history often were treated as supernatural portents, angels, or other religious omens. On January 25,1878, the Denison Daily News printed an article in which John Martin, Martin, according to the newspaper account, said it appeared to be about the size of a saucer, the first known use of the word saucer in association with a UFO. In April 1897, thousands of people reported seeing airships in various parts of the United States, scores of people even reported talking to the pilots. Thomas Edison was asked his opinion, and said, You can take it from me that it is a pure fake, the largest had an apparent size of about six Suns, he said
8.
Search for extraterrestrial intelligence
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There are great challenges in searching the universe for signs of intelligent life, including their identification and interpretation. As various SETI projects have progressed, their claims have been criticized by researchers as being too euphoric. Scientific investigation of the phenomenon began shortly after the advent of radio in the early 1900s. Focused international efforts to answer a variety of questions have been going on since the 1980s. In 2015, Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner announced a well-funded effort, There have been many earlier searches for extraterrestrial intelligence within the Solar System. In 1896, Nikola Tesla suggested that a version of his wireless electrical transmission system could be used to contact beings on Mars. On August 21–23,1924, Mars entered an opposition closer to Earth than at any time in the century before or the next 80 years. In the United States, a National Radio Silence Day was promoted during a 36-hour period from August 21–23, with all radios quiet for five minutes on the hour, every hour. The program was led by David Peck Todd with the assistance of Admiral Edward W. Eberle, with William F. Friedman. A1959 paper by Philip Morrison and Giuseppe Cocconi first pointed out the possibility of searching the microwave spectrum, and proposed frequencies and a set of initial targets. In 1960, Cornell University astronomer Frank Drake performed the first modern SETI experiment, named Project Ozma, a 400 kilohertz band around the marker frequency was scanned, using a single-channel receiver with a bandwidth of 100 hertz. The Soviet scientists took a strong interest in SETI during the 1960s, in the March 1955 issue of Scientific American, John D. Kraus described an idea to scan the cosmos for natural radio signals using a flat-plane radio telescope equipped with a parabolic reflector. Within two years, his concept was approved for construction by Ohio State University, with a total of US$71,000 in grants from the National Science Foundation, construction began on an 8-hectare plot in Delaware, Ohio. This Ohio State University Radio Observatory telescope was called Big Ear, later, it began the worlds first continuous SETI program, called the Ohio State University SETI program. In 1971, NASA funded a SETI study that involved Drake, Bernard M. Oliver of Hewlett-Packard Corporation, the resulting report proposed the construction of an Earth-based radio telescope array with 1,500 dishes known as Project Cyclops. The price tag for the Cyclops array was US$10 billion, Cyclops was not built, but the report formed the basis of much SETI work that followed. The Ohio State SETI program gained fame on August 15,1977, when Jerry Ehman and he quickly circled the indication on a printout and scribbled the exclamation Wow. in the margin. In 1980, Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman founded the U. S, Planetary Society, partly as a vehicle for SETI studies
9.
The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter
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The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter is a 10th-century Japanese monogatari containing folkloric elements. It is considered the oldest extant Japanese prose narrative although the oldest manuscript dates to 1592, the tale is also known as The Tale of Princess Kaguya, after its protagonist. It primarily details the life of a girl called Kaguya-hime. One day, while walking in the bamboo forest, an old, childless bamboo cutter called Taketori no Okina came across a mysterious, after cutting it open, he found inside it an infant the size of his thumb. He rejoiced to find such a girl and took her home. He and his wife raised her as their own child and named her Kaguya-hime, thereafter, Taketori no Okina found that whenever he cut down a stalk of bamboo, inside would be a small nugget of gold. Kaguya-hime grew from a baby into a woman of ordinary size. At first, Taketori no Okina tried to keep her away from outsiders, eventually, five princes came to Taketori no Okinas residence to ask for Kaguya-himes hand in marriage. The princes eventually persuaded Taketori no Okina to tell a reluctant Kaguya-hime to choose from among them, Kaguya-hime concocted impossible tasks for the princes, agreeing to marry the one who managed to bring her his specified item. That night, Taketori no Okina told the five princes what each must bring, realizing that it was an impossible task, the first prince returned with an expensive bowl, but after noticing that the bowl did not glow with holy light, Kaguya-hime saw through his deception. Likewise, two other princes attempted to deceive her with fakes, but also failed, the fourth gave up after encountering a storm, while the final prince lost his life in his attempt. After this, the Emperor of Japan, Mikado, came to see the strangely beautiful Kaguya-hime and, upon falling in love and she stayed in contact with the Emperor, but continued to rebuff his requests and marriage proposals. That summer, whenever Kaguya-hime saw the moon, her eyes filled with tears. Though her adoptive parents worried greatly and questioned her, she was unable to tell them what was wrong and her behaviour became increasingly erratic until she revealed that she was not of this world and must return to her people on the Moon. The gold that Taketori no Okina had been finding had in fact been a stipend from the people of the Moon, Kaguya-hime announced that, though she loved her many friends on Earth, she must return with the Moon people to her true home. She wrote sad notes of apology to her parents and to the Emperor and she then took a small taste of the elixir of life, attached it to her letter to the Emperor, and gave it to a guard officer. As she handed it to him, the robe was placed on her shoulders. The heavenly entourage took Kaguya-hime back to Tsuki-no-Miyako, leaving her earthly foster parents in tears, the parents became very sad and were soon put to bed sick
10.
Heliocentrism
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Heliocentrism is the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun at the center of the Solar System. Historically, Heliocentrism was opposed to geocentrism, which placed the Earth at the center, in the following century, Johannes Kepler elaborated upon and expanded this model to include elliptical orbits, and Galileo Galilei presented supporting observations made using a telescope. With the observations of William Herschel, Friedrich Bessel, and others, astronomers realized that the sun, the Ptolemaic system was a sophisticated astronomical system that managed to calculate the positions for the planets to a fair degree of accuracy. However, he rejected the idea of a spinning earth as absurd as he believed it would create huge winds and his planetary hypotheses were sufficiently real that the distances of moon, sun, planets and stars could be determined by treating orbits celestial spheres as contiguous realities. This system postulated the existence of a counter-earth collinear with the Earth and central fire, the Sun revolved around the central fire once a year, and the stars were stationary. The Earth maintained the same face towards the central fire. Kepler gave an explanation of the Pythagoreans central fire as the Sun. Heraclides of Pontus said that the rotation of the Earth explained the apparent daily motion of the celestial sphere and it used to be thought that he believed Mercury and Venus to revolve around the Sun, which in turn revolves around the Earth. Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius later described this as the Egyptian System, stating that it did not escape the skill of the Egyptians, the first person known to have proposed a heliocentric system, however, was Aristarchus of Samos. Like Eratosthenes, Aristarchus calculated the size of the Earth, and measured the size and distance of the Moon and Sun, from his estimates, he concluded that the Sun was six to seven times wider than the Earth and thus hundreds of times more voluminous. His writings on the system are lost, but some information is known from surviving descriptions and critical commentary by his contemporaries. This is the account as you have heard from astronomers. The stars are in fact much farther away than the distance that was assumed in ancient times. Archimedes says that Aristarchus made the stars distance larger, suggesting that he was answering the natural objection that Heliocentrism requires stellar parallactic oscillations and he apparently agreed to the point but placed the stars so distant as to make the parallactic motion invisibly minuscule. Thus Heliocentrism opened the way for realization that the universe was larger than the geocentrists taught, according to one of Plutarchs characters in the dialogue, the philosopher Cleanthes had held that Aristarchus should be charged with impiety for moving the hearth of the world. Since Plutarch mentions the followers of Aristarchus in passing, it is likely there were other astronomers in the Classical period who also espoused Heliocentrism. Seleucus adopted the system of Aristarchus and is said to have proved the heliocentric theory. He may have used trigonometric methods that were available in his time
11.
One Thousand and One Nights
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One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English-language edition, the work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West, Central, and South Asia and North Africa. The tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Mesopotamian, Indian, Jewish, the stories proceed from this original tale, some are framed within other tales, while others begin and end of their own accord. Some editions contain only a few hundred nights, while others include 1,001 or more, the bulk of the text is in prose, although verse is occasionally used for songs and riddles and to express heightened emotion. Most of the poems are single couplets or quatrains, although some are longer, the main frame story concerns Shahryār, whom the narrator calls a Sasanian king ruling in India and China. Shahryār begins to marry a succession of only to execute each one the next morning. Eventually the vizier, whose duty it is to provide them, Scheherazade, the viziers daughter, offers herself as the next bride and her father reluctantly agrees. On the night of their marriage, Scheherazade begins to tell the king a tale, the king, curious about how the story ends, is thus forced to postpone her execution in order to hear the conclusion. The next night, as soon as she finishes the tale, she begins a new one, so it goes on for 1,001 nights. The tales vary widely, they include historical tales, love stories, tragedies, comedies, poems, burlesques, numerous stories depict jinns, ghouls, apes, sorcerers, magicians, and legendary places, which are often intermingled with real people and geography, not always rationally. The different versions have different individually detailed endings but they all end with the giving his wife a pardon. The narrators standards for what constitutes a cliffhanger seem broader than in modern literature, the history of the Nights is extremely complex and modern scholars have made many attempts to untangle the story of how the collection as it currently exists came about. Most scholars agreed that the Nights was a work and that the earliest tales in it came from India and Persia. At some time, probably in the early 8th century, these tales were translated into Arabic under the title Alf Layla and this collection then formed the basis of The Thousand and One Nights. The original core of stories was quite small, then, in Iraq in the 9th or 10th century, this original core had Arab stories added to it – among them some tales about the Caliph Harun al-Rashid. Devices found in Sanskrit literature such as stories and animal fables are seen by some scholars as lying at the root of the conception of the Nights. Indian folklore is represented in the Nights by certain animal stories, the influence of the Panchatantra and Baital Pachisi is particularly notable. The Jataka Tales are a collection of 547 Buddhist stories, which are for the most part moral stories with an ethical purpose
12.
Solar System
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The Solar System is the gravitationally bound system comprising the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly. Of those objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest eight are the planets, with the remainder being significantly smaller objects, such as dwarf planets, of the objects that orbit the Sun indirectly, the moons, two are larger than the smallest planet, Mercury. The Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago from the collapse of a giant interstellar molecular cloud. The vast majority of the mass is in the Sun. The four smaller inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, are terrestrial planets, being composed of rock. The four outer planets are giant planets, being more massive than the terrestrials. All planets have almost circular orbits that lie within a flat disc called the ecliptic. The Solar System also contains smaller objects, the asteroid belt, which lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, mostly contains objects composed, like the terrestrial planets, of rock and metal. Beyond Neptunes orbit lie the Kuiper belt and scattered disc, which are populations of trans-Neptunian objects composed mostly of ices, within these populations are several dozen to possibly tens of thousands of objects large enough that they have been rounded by their own gravity. Such objects are categorized as dwarf planets, identified dwarf planets include the asteroid Ceres and the trans-Neptunian objects Pluto and Eris. In addition to two regions, various other small-body populations, including comets, centaurs and interplanetary dust clouds. Six of the planets, at least four of the dwarf planets, each of the outer planets is encircled by planetary rings of dust and other small objects. The solar wind, a stream of charged particles flowing outwards from the Sun, the heliopause is the point at which pressure from the solar wind is equal to the opposing pressure of the interstellar medium, it extends out to the edge of the scattered disc. The Oort cloud, which is thought to be the source for long-period comets, the Solar System is located in the Orion Arm,26,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way. For most of history, humanity did not recognize or understand the concept of the Solar System, the invention of the telescope led to the discovery of further planets and moons. The principal component of the Solar System is the Sun, a G2 main-sequence star that contains 99. 86% of the known mass. The Suns four largest orbiting bodies, the giant planets, account for 99% of the mass, with Jupiter. The remaining objects of the Solar System together comprise less than 0. 002% of the Solar Systems total mass, most large objects in orbit around the Sun lie near the plane of Earths orbit, known as the ecliptic
13.
Outer space
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Outer space or just space, is the void that exists between celestial bodies, including Earth. The baseline temperature, as set by the radiation from the Big Bang, is 2.7 kelvins. In most galaxies, observations provide evidence that 90% of the mass is in a form, called dark matter. Data indicates that the majority of the mass-energy in the universe is a poorly understood vacuum energy of space which astronomers label dark energy. Intergalactic space takes up most of the volume of the Universe, there is no firm boundary where outer space starts. However the Kármán line, at an altitude of 100 km above sea level, is used as the start of outer space in space treaties. The framework for international law was established by the Outer Space Treaty. This treaty precludes any claims of sovereignty and permits all states to freely explore outer space. Despite the drafting of UN resolutions for the uses of outer space. Humans began the exploration of space during the 20th century with the advent of high-altitude balloon flights. Earth orbit was first achieved by Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union in 1961, due to the high cost of getting into space, manned spaceflight has been limited to low Earth orbit and the Moon. Outer space represents an environment for human exploration because of the dual hazards of vacuum. Microgravity also has an effect on human physiology that causes both muscle atrophy and bone loss. In addition to health and environmental issues, the economic cost of putting objects, including humans. In 350 BCE, Greek philosopher Aristotle suggested that nature abhors a vacuum and this concept built upon a 5th-century BCE ontological argument by the Greek philosopher Parmenides, who denied the possible existence of a void in space. Based on this idea that a vacuum could not exist, in the West it was held for many centuries that space could not be empty. As late as the 17th century, the French philosopher René Descartes argued that the entirety of space must be filled, in ancient China, there were various schools of thought concerning the nature of the heavens, some of which bear a resemblance to the modern understanding. In the 2nd century, astronomer Zhang Heng became convinced that space must be infinite, extending well beyond the mechanism that supported the Sun, the surviving books of the Hsüan Yeh school said that the heavens were boundless, empty and void of substance
14.
Early modern period
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The early modern period of modern history follows the late Middle Ages of the post-classical era. Historians in recent decades have argued that from a worldwide standpoint, the period witnessed the exploration and colonization of the Americas and the rise of sustained contacts between previously isolated parts of the globe. The historical powers became involved in trade, as the exchange of goods, plants, animals, and food crops extended to the Old World. The Columbian Exchange greatly affected the human environment, New economies and institutions emerged, becoming more sophisticated and globally articulated over the course of the early modern period. This process began in the medieval North Italian city-states, particularly Genoa, Venice, the early modern period also included the rise of the dominance of the economic theory of mercantilism. The European colonization of the Americas, Asia, and Africa occurred during the 15th to 19th centuries, the early modern trends in various regions of the world represented a shift away from medieval modes of organization, politically and economically. Historians typically date the end of the modern period when the French Revolution of the 1790s began the modern period. Early modern themes Other In 16th century China, the Ming Dynastys economy was stimulated by trade with the Portuguese, Spanish. China became involved in a new trade of goods, plants, animals. Trade with Early Modern Europe and Japan brought in massive amounts of silver, during the last decades of the Ming the flow of silver into China was greatly diminished, thereby undermining state revenues and the entire Chinese economy. This damage to the economy was compounded by the effects on agriculture of the incipient Little Ice Age, natural calamities, crop failure, the ensuing breakdown of authority and peoples livelihoods allowed rebel leaders such as Li Zicheng to challenge Ming authority. The Ming Dynasty fell around 1644 to the Qing Dynasty, which was the last ruling dynasty of China, during its reign, the Qing Dynasty became highly integrated with Chinese culture. The Azuchi-Momoyama period saw the unification that preceded the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. The Edo period from 1600 to 1868 characterized early modern Japan, the Tokugawa shogunate was a feudal regime of Japan established by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family. This period gets its name from the city, Edo. The Tokugawa shogunate ruled from Edo Castle from 1603 until 1868, in 1392, General Yi Seong-gye established the Joseon Dynasty with a largely bloodless coup. Joseon experienced advances in science and culture, King Sejong the Great promulgated hangul, the Korean alphabet. The period saw various other cultural and technological advances as well as the dominance of neo-Confucianism over the entirety of Korea, during the late 16th and early 17th centuries, invasions by the neighboring Japanese and Qing Chinese nearly overran the Korean peninsula
15.
Johannes Kepler
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Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer. A key figure in the 17th-century scientific revolution, he is best known for his laws of motion, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi. These works also provided one of the foundations for Isaac Newtons theory of universal gravitation, Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, where he became an associate of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg. Later he became an assistant to the astronomer Tycho Brahe in Prague and he was also a mathematics teacher in Linz, and an adviser to General Wallenstein. Kepler lived in an era when there was no distinction between astronomy and astrology, but there was a strong division between astronomy and physics. Kepler was born on December 27, the feast day of St John the Evangelist,1571 and his grandfather, Sebald Kepler, had been Lord Mayor of the city. By the time Johannes was born, he had two brothers and one sister and the Kepler family fortune was in decline and his father, Heinrich Kepler, earned a precarious living as a mercenary, and he left the family when Johannes was five years old. He was believed to have died in the Eighty Years War in the Netherlands and his mother Katharina Guldenmann, an innkeepers daughter, was a healer and herbalist. Born prematurely, Johannes claimed to have weak and sickly as a child. Nevertheless, he often impressed travelers at his grandfathers inn with his phenomenal mathematical faculty and he was introduced to astronomy at an early age, and developed a love for it that would span his entire life. At age six, he observed the Great Comet of 1577, in 1580, at age nine, he observed another astronomical event, a lunar eclipse, recording that he remembered being called outdoors to see it and that the moon appeared quite red. However, childhood smallpox left him with vision and crippled hands. In 1589, after moving through grammar school, Latin school, there, he studied philosophy under Vitus Müller and theology under Jacob Heerbrand, who also taught Michael Maestlin while he was a student, until he became Chancellor at Tübingen in 1590. He proved himself to be a mathematician and earned a reputation as a skilful astrologer. Under the instruction of Michael Maestlin, Tübingens professor of mathematics from 1583 to 1631 and he became a Copernican at that time. In a student disputation, he defended heliocentrism from both a theoretical and theological perspective, maintaining that the Sun was the source of motive power in the universe. Despite his desire to become a minister, near the end of his studies, Kepler was recommended for a position as teacher of mathematics and he accepted the position in April 1594, at the age of 23. Keplers first major work, Mysterium Cosmographicum, was the first published defense of the Copernican system
16.
Somnium (novel)
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Somnium is a novel written in 1608, in Latin, by Johannes Kepler. The narrative would not be published until 1634 by Keplers son, in the narrative, an Icelandic boy and his witch mother learn of an island named Levania from a daemon. Somnium presents a detailed description of how the Earth might look when viewed from the Moon. Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov have referred to it as the first work of science fiction, the story begins with Kepler reading about a skillful magician named Libussa. He falls asleep while reading about her and he recounts a strange dream he had from reading that book. The dream begins with Kepler reading a book about Duracotus, an Icelandic boy who is 14 years old, Duracotus mother, Fiolxhilde, makes a living selling bags of herbs and cloth with strange markings on them. Duracotus is sold by Fiolxhilde to a skipper after cutting one of these bags. He travels with the skipper for a while until a letter is to be delivered to Tycho Brahe on the island of Hven, since Duracotus is made seasick by the trip there, the skipper leaves Duracotus to deliver the letter and stay with Tycho. Tycho asks his students to teach Duracotus Danish so they can talk, along with learning Danish, Duracotus learns of astronomy from Tycho and his students. Duracotus is fascinated with astronomy and enjoys the time they spend looking at the night sky, Duracotus spends several years with Tycho before returning home to Iceland. Upon his return to Iceland, Duracotus finds his mother still alive and she is overjoyed to learn that he is well studied in astronomy as she too possesses knowledge of astronomy. One day, Fiolxhilde reveals to Duracotus how she learned of the heavens and she tells him about the daemons she can summon. These daemons can move her anywhere on Earth in an instant, if the place is too far away for them to take her, they describe it in great detail. She then summons her favorite daemon to speak with them, the summoned daemon tells them, Fifty thousand miles up in the Aether lies the island of Levania. According to the daemon, there is a pathway between the island of Levania and Earth, when the pathway is open, daemons can take humans to the island in four hours. The journey is a shock to humans, so they are sedated for the trip, extreme cold is also a concern on the trip, but the daemons use their powers to ward it off. Another concern is the air, so humans have to have damp sponges placed in their nostrils in order to breathe, the trip is made with the daemons pushing the humans toward Levania with great force. At the Lagrangian point between the Earth and the Moon, the daemons have to slow the humans down lest they hurtle with great force into the Moon, after describing the trip to Levania, the daemon notes that daemons are overpowered by the Sun
17.
Henry More
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Henry More FRS was an English philosopher of the Cambridge Platonist school. Henry was born in Grantham, Lincolnshire on 12 October 1614 and he was the seventh son of Alexander More, mayor of Grantham, and Anne More. Both his parents were Calvinists but he himself could never swallow that hard doctrine and he was schooled at The Kings School, Grantham and at Eton College. In 1631 he entered Christs College, Cambridge, at about the time John Milton was leaving it and he took his BA in 1635, his MA in 1639, and immediately afterwards became a fellow of his college, turning down all other positions that were offered. He would not accept the mastership of his college, to which, it is understood, he would have been preferred in 1654, when Ralph Cudworth was appointed. In 1675, he accepted a prebend in Gloucester Cathedral. More taught many pupils, including Anne Finch, sister of Heneage Finch. She later became Lady Conway, and at her seat at Ragley in Warwickshire, More would spend a considerable part of his time. She and her husband both appreciated him, and amidst the woods of this retreat he wrote several of his books, the spiritual enthusiasm of Lady Conway was a considerable factor in some of Mores speculations, even though she at length joined the Quakers. She became the not only of More and William Penn. Ragley became a centre of devotion and spiritualism and he attempted to use the details of 17th-century mechanical philosophy—as developed by René Descartes—to establish the existence of immaterial substance. More continues. it is plain that if a thing be at all it must be extended, so for More spirit too must be extended. This led him to the idea of a dimension in which the spirit is extended. A quotation from More is used as the epigraph of Ralph Waldo Emersons The Over-soul, helena Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, quoted More and gave an exposition of his ideas in chapter VII of Isis Unveiled. More was a writer of verse and prose. The Divine Dialogues condenses his general view of philosophy and religion, like many others he began as a poet and ended as a prose writer. His first work, published in 1642, but written two years earlier, was Psychodoia Platonica, or, a Platonicall Song of the Soul, consisting of foure severall Poems. It was followed in 1647 by his collection of Philosophicall Poems, which includes The Song of the Soul, enlarged
18.
Democritus
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Democritus was an influential Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher primarily remembered today for his formulation of an atomic theory of the universe. Democritus was born in Abdera, Thrace, around 460 BC, although and his exact contributions are difficult to disentangle from those of his mentor Leucippus, as they are often mentioned together in texts. Largely ignored in ancient Athens, Democritus is said to have been disliked so much by Plato that the latter wished all of his books burned and he was nevertheless well known to his fellow northern-born philosopher Aristotle. Many consider Democritus to be the father of modern science, none of his writings have survived, only fragments are known from his vast body of work. Democritus was said to be born in the city of Abdera in Thrace and he was born in the 80th Olympiad according to Apollodorus of Athens, and although Thrasyllus placed his birth in 470 BC, the later date is probably more likely. John Burnet has argued that the date of 460 is too early since, according to Diogenes Laërtius ix.41 and it was said that Democrituss father was from a noble family and so wealthy that he received Xerxes on his march through Abdera. Democritus spent the inheritance which his father left him on travels into distant countries and he traveled to Asia, and was even said to have reached India and Ethiopia. It is known that he wrote on Babylon and Meroe, he visited Egypt and he himself declared that among his contemporaries none had made greater journeys, seen more countries, and met more scholars than himself. He particularly mentions the Egyptian mathematicians, whose knowledge he praises, theophrastus, too, spoke of him as a man who had seen many countries. During his travels, according to Diogenes Laërtius, he acquainted with the Chaldean magi. Ostanes, one of the magi accompanying Xerxes, was said to have taught him. After returning to his land he occupied himself with natural philosophy. He traveled throughout Greece to acquire a knowledge of its cultures. He mentions many Greek philosophers in his writings, and his wealth enabled him to purchase their writings, Leucippus, the founder of atomism, was the greatest influence upon him. Diogenes Laertius says that he was friends with Hippocrates and he may have been acquainted with Socrates, but Plato does not mention him and Democritus himself is quoted as saying, I came to Athens and no one knew me. Aristotle placed him among the natural philosophers. The many anecdotes about Democritus, especially in Diogenes Laërtius, attest to his disinterest, modesty, and simplicity, one story has him deliberately blinding himself in order to be less disturbed in his pursuits, it may well be true that he lost his sight in old age. He was cheerful, and was ready to see the comical side of life
19.
Paradise Lost
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Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. The first version, published in 1667, consisted of ten books with over ten lines of verse. A second edition followed in 1674, arranged into twelve books with minor revisions throughout and it is considered by critics to be Miltons major work, and it helped solidify his reputation as one of the greatest English poets of his time. The poem concerns the Biblical story of the Fall of Man, Miltons purpose, stated in Book I, is to justify the ways of God to men. In his introduction to the Penguin edition of Paradise Lost, the Milton scholar John Leonard notes, John Aubrey tells us that the poem was begun in about 1658 and finished in about 1663. But parts were almost certainly written earlier, and its roots lie in Miltons earliest youth, Leonard speculates that the English Civil War interrupted Miltons earliest attempts to start his epic that would encompass all space and time. Leonard also notes that Milton did not at first plan to write a biblical epic, however, in the 1672 edition, Paradise Lost contained twelve books. Having gone totally blind in 1652, Milton wrote Paradise Lost entirely through dictation with the help of amanuenses, the poem is separated into twelve books or sections, the lengths of which vary greatly. The Arguments at the head of each book were added in subsequent imprints of the first edition, originally published in ten books, a fully Revised and Augmented edition reorganized into twelve books was issued in 1674, and this is the edition generally used today. The poem follows the tradition of starting in medias res. Miltons story has two narrative arcs, one about Satan and the other following Adam and Eve and it begins after Satan and the other rebel angels have been defeated and banished to Hell, or, as it is also called in the poem, Tartarus. In Pandæmonium, Satan employs his rhetorical skill to organise his followers, he is aided by Mammon, belial and Moloch are also present. At the end of the debate, Satan volunteers to poison the newly created Earth and Gods new and most favoured creation and he braves the dangers of the Abyss alone in a manner reminiscent of Odysseus or Aeneas. After an arduous traversal of the Chaos outside Hell, he enters Gods new material World, at several points in the poem, an Angelic War over Heaven is recounted from different perspectives. Satans rebellion follows the convention of large-scale warfare. The battles between the angels and Satans forces take place over three days. At the final battle, the Son of God single-handedly defeats the legion of angelic rebels. Following this purge, God creates the World, culminating in his creation of Adam and Eve
20.
John Milton
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John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, man of letters, and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of flux and political upheaval. Miltons poetry and prose reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination, Samuel Johnson praised Paradise Lost as a poem which. The phases of Miltons life parallel the major historical and political divisions in Stuart Britain, the Restoration of 1660 deprived Milton, now completely blind, of his public platform, but this period saw him complete most of his major works of poetry. Miltons views developed from his extensive reading, as well as travel and experience. By the time of his death in 1674, Milton was impoverished and on the margins of English intellectual life, yet famous throughout Europe, John Milton was born in Bread Street, London on 9 December 1608, the son of composer John Milton and his wife Sarah Jeffrey. The senior John Milton moved to London around 1583 after being disinherited by his devout Catholic father Richard Milton for embracing Protestantism, in London, the senior John Milton married Sarah Jeffrey and found lasting financial success as a scrivener. He lived in and worked from a house on Bread Street, the elder Milton was noted for his skill as a musical composer, and this talent left his son with a lifelong appreciation for music and friendships with musicians such as Henry Lawes. Miltons fathers prosperity provided his eldest son with a tutor, Thomas Young. Research suggests that Youngs influence served as the introduction to religious radicalism. After Youngs tutorship, Milton attended St Pauls School in London, there he began the study of Latin and Greek, and the classical languages left an imprint on his poetry in English. Miltons first datable compositions are two psalms done at age 15 at Long Bennington, one contemporary source is the Brief Lives of John Aubrey, an uneven compilation including first-hand reports. In the work, Aubrey quotes Christopher, Miltons younger brother, When he was young, he studied hard and sat up very late. In 1625, Milton began attending Christs College, Cambridge and he graduated with a B. A. in 1629, and ranked fourth of 24 honours graduates that year in the University of Cambridge. Preparing to become an Anglican priest, Milton stayed on to obtain his Master of Arts degree on 3 July 1632, Milton was probably rusticated for quarrelling in his first year with his tutor, Bishop William Chappell. He was certainly at home in the Lent Term 1626, there he wrote his Elegia Prima, a first Latin elegy, to Charles Diodati, based on remarks of John Aubrey, Chappell whipt Milton. This story is now disputed, though certainly Milton disliked Chappell, historian Christopher Hill cautiously notes that Milton was apparently rusticated, and that the differences between Chappell and Milton may have been either religious or personal. It is also possible that, like Isaac Newton four decades later, Milton was sent home because of the plague, in 1626, Miltons tutor was Nathaniel Tovey
21.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
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Fontenelle was born in Rouen, France and died in Paris just one month before his 100th birthday. His mother was the sister of great French dramatists Pierre and Thomas Corneille and his father, François le Bovier de Fontenelle, was a lawyer who worked in the provincial court of Rouen and came from a family of lawyers from Alençon. He trained in the law but gave up after one case, devoting his life to writing about philosophers and scientists, especially defending the Cartesian tradition. In spite of the merit and value of his writings. He was a commentator and explicator and occasionally a passionate, though generally good-humoured and he was educated at the college of the Jesuits, the Lycée Pierre Corneille. At the Lycée he showed a preference for literature and distinguished himself and he began as a poet, writing a poem in Latin at the age of 13 and more than once competed for prizes of the Académie française, but he never won anything. He visited Paris from time to time and became friendly with the abbé de Saint-Pierre, the abbé Vertot and he witnessed, in 1680, the total failure of his tragedy Aspar. Fontenelle afterwards acknowledged the public verdict by burning his unfortunate drama and his opera of Thétis et Pélée,1689, was not much better, and it may be significant that none of his dramatic works are still performed. His Poésies pastorales are also mediocre and his Lettres galantes du chevalier dHer. Published anonymously in 1685, was a collection of letters portraying worldly society of the time. In 1686 his famous allegory of Rome and Geneva, slightly disguised as the rival princesses Mreo and Eenegu, in the Relation de lîle de Bornéo and he wrote extensively on the nature of the universe, Behold a universe so immense that I am lost in it. I no longer know where I am, I am just nothing at all. Our world is terrifying in its insignificance and it consisted of two essays, the first of which was designed to prove that oracles were not given by the supernatural agency of demons, and the second that they did not cease with the birth of Jesus. A noted gourmand, he attributed his longevity to eating strawberries, at ninety-two one woman wrote that he was as lively as a man of twenty-two. When, in his nineties he met the beautiful Madame Helvétius, he reportedly told her, Ah Madame. Perhaps the best known of his éloges, of which there are sixty-nine in all, is that of his uncle Pierre Corneille. This was first printed in the Nouvelles de la republique des lettres and, the other important works of Fontenelle are his Éléments de la géometrie de linfini and his Théorie des tourbillons. In the latter he supported the views of René Descartes concerning gravitation and he is noted for the accessibility of his work – particularly its novelistic style
22.
Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds
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Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds is a popular science book by French author Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, published in 1686. It offered an explanation of the model of the Universe. The book is Fontenelles most famous work and is considered to be one of the first major works of the Age of Enlightenment, in the preface, Fontenelle addresses female readers and suggests that the offered explanation should be easily understood even by those without scientific knowledge. This move has been praised by some modern feminist critics as admitting womens intelligence in scientific matters, a precursor includes Giordano Brunos De linfinito, universo e mondi. The book itself is presented as a series of conversations between a gallant philosopher and a marquise, who walk in the garden at night. The philosopher explains the model and also muses on the possibility of extraterrestrial life. The first English translation was compounded by John Glanvill in 1687, followed by another translation by Aphra Behn in 1688, under the title A Discovery of New Worlds. Antiokh Kantemir translated it into Russian in 1730, although the translation was published in a censored edition in 1740. The book was well received both in France and elsewhere, and was regularly published. In 1691, Fontenelle was elected to Académie française, Full text of 1800 edition at Google Books Full text of 1803 edition at Google Books Full text of 1803 edition Digitized by Google, Free Download at OpenLibrary
23.
Voltaire
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Voltaire was a versatile writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 21,000 letters and over two books and pamphlets. He was an advocate of civil liberties, despite the risk this placed him in under the strict censorship laws of the time. As a satirical polemicist, he made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma. Some speculation surrounds Voltaires date of birth, because he claimed he was born on 20 February 1694 as the son of a nobleman. Two of his older brothers—Armand-François and Robert—died in infancy and his brother, Armand. Nicknamed Zozo by his family, Voltaire was baptized on 22 November 1694, with François de Castagnère, abbé de Châteauneuf, and Marie Daumard, the wife of his mothers cousin, standing as godparents. He was educated by the Jesuits at the Collège Louis-le-Grand, where he was taught Latin, theology, and rhetoric, later in life he became fluent in Italian, Spanish, and English. By the time he left school, Voltaire had decided he wanted to be a writer, against the wishes of his father, Voltaire, pretending to work in Paris as an assistant to a notary, spent much of his time writing poetry. When his father out, he sent Voltaire to study law. Nevertheless, he continued to write, producing essays and historical studies, Voltaires wit made him popular among some of the aristocratic families with whom he mixed. In 1713, his father obtained a job for him as a secretary to the new French ambassador in the Netherlands, the marquis de Châteauneuf, at The Hague, Voltaire fell in love with a French Protestant refugee named Catherine Olympe Dunoyer. Their scandalous affair was discovered by de Châteauneuf and Voltaire was forced to return to France by the end of the year, Most of Voltaires early life revolved around Paris. From early on, Voltaire had trouble with the authorities for critiques of the government and these activities were to result in two imprisonments and a temporary exile to England. One satirical verse, in which Voltaire accused the Régent of incest with his own daughter, the Comédie-Française had agreed in January 1717 to stage his debut play, Œdipe, and it opened in mid-November 1718, seven months after his release. Its immediate critical and financial success established his reputation, both the Régent and King George I of Great Britain presented Voltaire with medals as a mark of their appreciation. He mainly argued for tolerance and freedom of thought. He campaigned to eradicate priestly and aristo-monarchical authority, and supported a constitutional monarchy that protects peoples rights, the author adopted the name Voltaire in 1718, following his incarceration at the Bastille
24.
Washington Irving
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Washington Irving was an American short story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Irving served as the U. S. ambassador to Spain from 1842 to 1846. He made his debut in 1802 with a series of observational letters to the Morning Chronicle. After moving to England for the business in 1815, he achieved international fame with the publication of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. He continued to publish regularly—and almost always successfully—throughout his life, and just eight months before his death, Irving was also admired by some European writers, including Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Thomas Campbell, Francis Jeffrey, and Charles Dickens. Washington Irvings parents were William Irving, Sr. originally of Quholm, Shapinsay, Orkney and they married in 1761 while William was serving as a petty officer in the British Navy. They had eleven children, eight of whom survived to adulthood and their first two sons, each named William, died in infancy, as did their fourth child, John. Their surviving children were, William, Jr. Ann, Peter, Catherine, Ebenezer, John Treat, Sarah, and Washington. At age six, with the help of a nanny, Irving met his namesake, the president blessed young Irving, an encounter Irving later commemorated in a small watercolor painting, which still hangs in his home today. The Irvings lived at 131 William Street at the time of Washington Irvings birth, the family later moved across the street to 128 William St. An uninterested student, Irving preferred adventure stories and drama and and it was in Tarrytown that Irving became familiar with the nearby town of Sleepy Hollow, with its quaint Dutch customs and local ghost stories. Irving made several trips up the Hudson as a teenager, including an extended visit to Johnstown, New York, where he passed through the Catskill mountain region. F all the scenery of the Hudson, Irving wrote later, the 19-year-old Irving began writing letters to the New York Morning Chronicle in 1802, submitting commentaries on the citys social and theater scene under the name of Jonathan Oldstyle. The name, which evoked the writers Federalist leanings, was the first of many pseudonyms Irving would employ throughout his career. The letters brought Irving some early fame and moderate notoriety, concerned for his health, Irvings brothers financed an extended tour of Europe from 1804 to 1806. Irving bypassed most of the sites and locations considered essential for the development of an upwardly mobile young man, William wrote that, though he was pleased his brothers health was improving, he did not like the choice to gallop through Italy. Leaving Florence on your left and Venice on your right, instead, Irving honed the social and conversational skills that would later make him one of the worlds most in-demand guests. I endeavor to take things as they come with cheerfulness, Irving wrote, while visiting Rome in 1805, Irving struck up a friendship with the American painter Washington Allston, and nearly allowed himself to be persuaded into following Allston into a career as a painter
25.
Camille Flammarion
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Nicolas Camille Flammarion FRAS was a French astronomer and author. He was an author of more than fifty titles, including popular science works about astronomy, several notable early science fiction novels. He also published the magazine LAstronomie, starting in 1882 and he maintained a private observatory at Juvisy-sur-Orge, France. Camille Flammarion was born in Montigny-le-Roi, Haute-Marne, France and he was the brother of Ernest Flammarion, founder of the Groupe Flammarion publishing house. He was a founder and the first president of the Société astronomique de France, in January,1895, after 13 volumes of LAstronomie and 8 of BSAF, the two merged, making L’Astronomie the Bulletin of the Societé. The Flammarion engraving first appeared in Flammarion’s 1888 edition of L’Atmosphère, in 1907, he wrote that he believed that dwellers on Mars had tried to communicate with the Earth in the past. He also believed in 1907 that a comet was heading toward Earth. In 1910, for the appearance of Halleys Comet, he believed the gas from the tail would impregnate atmosphere. He has been described as an astronomer, mystic and storyteller who was obsessed by life after death, and on other worlds, and seemed to see no distinction between the two. He was influenced by Jean Reynaud and his Terre et ciel and he was convinced that souls after the physical death pass from planet to planet, progressively improving at each new incarnation. In Real and Imaginary Worlds and Lumen, he describes a range of species, including sentient plants which combine the processes of digestion and respiration. ”His psychical studies also influenced some of his science fiction. Other than that, his writing about other worlds adhered fairly closely to then current ideas in evolutionary theory, among other things, he believed that all planets went through more or less the same stages of development, but at different rates depending on their sizes. Flammarion’s influence was great, not just on the thought of his day. Both George Griffith and Edgar Rice Burroughs are referring to him in their writing, in the English translation of Lumen, Brian Stapleford argues that both Olaf Stapledon and William Hope Hodgson have likely been influenced by Flammarion. Arthur Conan Doyles The Poison Belt, published 1913, also have a lot in common with Flammarions worries that the tail of Halleys Comet would be poisonous for earth life, Camille was a brother of Ernest Flammarion and Berthe Martin-Flammarion and uncle of a woman named Zelinda. His first wife was Sylvie Petiaux-Hugo Flammarion, and his wife was Gabrielle Renaudot Flammarion. Camille, a contemporary of Giovanni Schiaparelli, extensively researched the so-called canals during the 1880s and 1890s and he assumed the planet was in an advanced stage of its habitability, and the canals were the product of an intelligent species attempting to survive on a dying world. Religious belief must not take the place of impartial analysis and we must be constantly on our guard against illusions
26.
Great Moon Hoax
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The discoveries were falsely attributed to Sir John Herschel, one of the best-known contemporary astronomers of that time. The story was advertised on August 21,1835, as an upcoming feature allegedly reprinted from The Edinburgh Courant, the first in a series of six was published four days later on August 25. The headline read, The articles described fantastic animals on the Moon, including bison, goats, unicorns, bipedal tail-less beavers, there were trees, oceans and beaches. These discoveries were made with an immense telescope of an entirely new principle. The author of the narrative was ostensibly Dr. Andrew Grant, the companion and amanuensis of Sir John Herschel. Authorship of the article has been attributed to Richard Adams Locke, Locke publicly admitted to being the author in 1840, in a letter to the weekly paper New World. Still, rumours persisted that others were involved, however, there is no good evidence to indicate that anyone but Locke was the author of the hoax. Assuming that Richard A. Gruithuisen claimed to have observed shades of color on the lunar surface. He also observed lines and geometrical shapes, which he indicated the existence of walls, roads, fortifications. However, a direct object of Lockes satire was Rev. Thomas Dick. Dick had computed that the Solar System contained 21,891,974,404,480 inhabitants, in fact, the Moon alone, by his count, would contain 4,200,000,000 inhabitants. His writings were popular in the United States, his fans including intellectual luminaries such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. According to legend, The Suns circulation increased dramatically because of the hoax and remained permanently greater than before, however, the degree to which the hoax increased the papers circulation has certainly been exaggerated in popular accounts of the event. It was not discovered to be a hoax for several weeks after its publication and, even then, Herschel was initially amused by the hoax, noting that his own real observations could never be as exciting. He became annoyed later when he had to answer questions from people who believed the hoax was serious, edgar Allan Poe claimed the story was a plagiarism of his earlier work The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall. His editor at the time was Richard Adams Locke and he later published The Balloon-Hoax in the same newspaper. The story was reprinted in the New York Transcript on September 2–5,1835, under the headline Lunar Discoveries, Extraordinary Aerial Voyage by Baron Hans Pfaall. Poe described a voyage to the Moon in a balloon, using a factually plausible scenario, Pfaall lives for five years on the Moon with lunarians
27.
Bug-eyed monster
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The bug-eyed monster is an early convention of the science fiction genre. Extraterrestrials in science fiction of the 1930s were often described as creatures with huge, oversized or compound eyes. The term is now often abbreviated to BEM, when the show was created, the BBC producers stated that Doctor Who would be a hard science fiction show, and there would be no bug-eyed monsters – explicitly stated by show creator Sydney Newman. Writer Terry Nation created the Daleks in the second serial, much to Newmans disapproval. These have frequently referred to as bug-eyed monsters since that time. The main character is a monster in the animated childrens television series Invader Zim
28.
H. G. Wells
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Herbert George H. G. Wells was an English writer. He was prolific in many genres, including the novel, history, politics, social commentary, Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is called a father of science fiction, along with Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback. His most notable science fiction works include The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man and he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. Wellss earliest specialised training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a specifically and fundamentally Darwinian context and he was also from an early date an outspoken socialist, often sympathising with pacifist views. His later works became increasingly political and didactic, and he wrote science fiction. A diabetic, in 1934, Wells co-founded the charity The Diabetic Association, Herbert George Wells was born at Atlas House,46 High Street in Bromley, Kent, on 21 September 1866. Called Bertie in the family, he was the fourth and last child of Joseph Wells and his wife, Sarah Neal. An inheritance had allowed the family to acquire a shop in which they sold china and sporting goods, although it failed to prosper, the stock was old and worn out, and the location was poor. Joseph Wells managed to earn an income, but little of it came from the shop. Payment for skilled bowlers and batsmen came from voluntary donations afterwards, a defining incident of young Wellss life was an accident in 1874 that left him bedridden with a broken leg. To pass the time he started reading books from the local library and he soon became devoted to the other worlds and lives to which books gave him access, they also stimulated his desire to write. Later that year he entered Thomas Morleys Commercial Academy, a school founded in 1849 following the bankruptcy of Morleys earlier school. The teaching was erratic, the curriculum mostly focused, Wells later said, Wells continued at Morleys Academy until 1880. In 1877, his father, Joseph Wells, fractured his thigh, the accident effectively put an end to Josephs career as a cricketer, and his subsequent earnings as a shopkeeper were not enough to compensate for the loss of the primary source of family income. No longer able to support financially, the family instead sought to place their sons as apprentices in various occupations. From 1880 to 1883, Wells had an apprenticeship as a draper at the Southsea Drapery Emporium. Wellss parents had a turbulent marriage, owing primarily to his mother being a Protestant, when his mother returned to work as a ladys maid, one of the conditions of work was that she would not be permitted to have living space for her husband and children. Thereafter, she and Joseph lived separate lives, though they never divorced and remained faithful to each other, as a consequence, Herberts personal troubles increased as he subsequently failed as a draper and also, later, as a chemists assistant
29.
Olaf Stapledon
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William Olaf Stapledon – known as Olaf Stapledon – was a British philosopher and author of influential works of science fiction. In 2014, he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, Stapledon was born in Seacombe, Wallasey, on the Wirral Peninsula in Cheshire, the only son of William Clibbert Stapledon and Emmeline Miller. The first six years of his life were spent with his parents at Port Said and he was educated at Abbotsholme School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he acquired a BA degree in Modern History in 1909, promoted to an MA degree in 1913. After a brief stint as a teacher at Manchester Grammar School he worked in shipping offices in Liverpool, from 1912 to 1915 Stapledon worked with the Liverpool branch of the Workers Educational Association. During the First World War he served as a conscientious objector, Stapledon became an ambulance driver with the Friends Ambulance Unit in France and Belgium from July 1915 to January 1919, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery. On 16 July 1919 he married Agnes Zena Miller, an Australian cousin and they had first met in 1903, and later maintained a correspondence throughout the war. They had a daughter, Mary Sydney Stapledon, and a son, in 1920 they moved to West Kirby. Stapledon was awarded a PhD degree in philosophy from the University of Liverpool in 1925 and used his thesis as the basis for his first published prose book. However, he turned to fiction in the hope of presenting his ideas to a wider public. The relative success of Last and First Men prompted him to become a full-time writer and he wrote a sequel, Last Men in London, and followed it up with many more books of both fiction and philosophy. For the duration of the Second World War Stapledon abandoned his pacifism, in 1940 the Stapledon family built and moved into a new house on Simons Field, in Caldy, on the Wirral. During the war Stapledon become an advocate of J. B. Priestley and Richard Aclands left-wing Common Wealth Party. After 1945 Stapledon travelled widely on lecture tours, visiting the Netherlands, Sweden and France and he attended the Conference for World Peace held in New York City in 1949, the only Briton to be granted a visa to do so. In 1950 he became involved with the anti-apartheid movement, after a week of lectures in Paris, he cancelled a projected trip to Yugoslavia and returned to his home in Caldy, where he died very suddenly of a heart attack. On Stapledons religious views, he was an agnostic, Stapledon was cremated at Landican Crematorium. His widow and their children scattered his ashes on the cliffs overlooking the Dee Estuary. Stapledon Wood, on the south-east side of Caldy Hill, is named after him and it is filled with protagonists who are tormented by the conflict between their higher and lower impulses. Stapledons writings directly influenced Arthur C, the supermind composed of many individual consciousnesses forms a recurring theme in his work
30.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
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Edgar Rice Burroughs was an American writer best known for his creations of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter, although he produced works in many genres. Burroughs was born on September 1,1875, in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Major George Tyler Burroughs, a businessman and Civil War veteran. His middle name is from his grandmother, Mary Rice Burroughs. Burroughs was of almost entirely English ancestry, with a line that had been in North America since the early colonial era. Through his grandmother Mary Rice, he was descended from Edmund Rice and he once remarked, I can trace my ancestry back to Deacon Edmund Rice. The Burroughs side of the family was also of English origin, many of his ancestors fought in the American Revolution. He had other ancestors who settled in Virginia during the colonial period, Burroughs was educated at a number of local schools, and during the Chicago influenza epidemic in 1891, he spent half a year at his brothers ranch on the Raft River in Idaho. He then attended Phillips Academy, in Andover, Massachusetts, graduating in 1895, and failing the entrance exam for the United States Military Academy at West Point, he became an enlisted soldier with the 7th U. S. Cavalry in Fort Grant, Arizona Territory. After being diagnosed with a problem and thus ineligible to serve. After his discharge, Burroughs worked a number of different jobs and he drifted and worked on a ranch in Idaho. He found work at his fathers firm in 1899 and he married his childhood sweetheart, Emma Hulbert, in January 1900. In 1904, he left his job and worked regularly, first in Idaho. By 1911, after seven years of low wages, he was working as a pencil-sharpener wholesaler, by this time, he and Emma had two children, Joan, who later married the Tarzan film actor James Pierce, and Hulbert. During this period, he had spare time and began reading pulp fiction magazines. In 1929 he recalled thinking that. if people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines, in 1913, Burroughs and Emma had their third and last child, John Coleman Burroughs, later known for his illustrations of his fathers books. In the 1920s Burroughs became a pilot, purchased a Security Airster S-1, Burroughs divorced Emma in 1934, and in 1935 he married the former actress Florence Gilbert Dearholt, the former wife of his friend Ashton Dearholt. Burroughs adopted the Dearholts two children and he and Florence divorced in 1942. Burroughs was in his late 60s and was in Honolulu at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
31.
Mars
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Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, after Mercury. Named after the Roman god of war, it is referred to as the Red Planet because the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance. Mars is a planet with a thin atmosphere, having surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the valleys, deserts, and polar ice caps of Earth. The rotational period and seasonal cycles of Mars are likewise similar to those of Earth, Mars is the site of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano and second-highest known mountain in the Solar System, and of Valles Marineris, one of the largest canyons in the Solar System. The smooth Borealis basin in the northern hemisphere covers 40% of the planet, Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are small and irregularly shaped. These may be captured asteroids, similar to 5261 Eureka, a Mars trojan, there are ongoing investigations assessing the past habitability potential of Mars, as well as the possibility of extant life. Future astrobiology missions are planned, including the Mars 2020 and ExoMars rovers, liquid water cannot exist on the surface of Mars due to low atmospheric pressure, which is about 6⁄1000 that of the Earths, except at the lowest elevations for short periods. The two polar ice caps appear to be largely of water. The volume of ice in the south polar ice cap, if melted. On November 22,2016, NASA reported finding a large amount of ice in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars. The volume of water detected has been estimated to be equivalent to the volume of water in Lake Superior, Mars can easily be seen from Earth with the naked eye, as can its reddish coloring. Its apparent magnitude reaches −2.91, which is surpassed only by Jupiter, Venus, the Moon, optical ground-based telescopes are typically limited to resolving features about 300 kilometers across when Earth and Mars are closest because of Earths atmosphere. Mars is approximately half the diameter of Earth with an area only slightly less than the total area of Earths dry land. Mars is less dense than Earth, having about 15% of Earths volume and 11% of Earths mass, the red-orange appearance of the Martian surface is caused by iron oxide, or rust. It can look like butterscotch, other common colors include golden, brown, tan. Like Earth, Mars has differentiated into a metallic core overlaid by less dense materials. Current models of its interior imply a core with a radius of about 1,794 ±65 kilometers, consisting primarily of iron and this iron sulfide core is thought to be twice as rich in lighter elements than Earths. The core is surrounded by a mantle that formed many of the tectonic and volcanic features on the planet
32.
A Princess of Mars
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A Princess of Mars is a science fantasy novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first of his Barsoom series. It was first serialized in the pulp magazine All-Story Magazine from February–July,1912, full of swordplay and daring feats, the novel is considered a classic example of 20th-century pulp fiction. It is also an instance of the planetary romance, a subgenre of science fantasy that became highly popular in the decades following its publication. Its early chapters also contain elements of the Western, the story is set on Mars, imagined as a dying planet with a harsh desert environment. This vision of Mars was based on the work of the astronomer Percival Lowell, whose ideas were popularized in the late 19th. The Barsoom series inspired a number of well-known 20th-century science fiction writers, including Jack Vance, Ray Bradbury, clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, and John Norman. John Carter, a Confederate veteran of the American Civil War, having struck a rich vein of gold, he runs afoul of the Apaches. While attempting to evade pursuit by hiding in a cave, he is mysteriously transported to Mars. Carter finds that he has strength and superhuman agility in this new environment as a result of its lesser gravity. He soon falls in with a tribe of Green Martians, or Tharks, as the planets warlike. Thanks to his strength and martial prowess, Carter rises to a position in the tribe and earns the respect and eventually the friendship of Tars Tarkas. The Tharks subsequently capture Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, a member of the humanoid red Martian race, the red Martians inhabit a loose network of city-states and control the desert planets canals, along which its agriculture is concentrated. Carter rescues Dejah Thoris from the men in a bid to return her to her people. Winning Dejah Thoris heart, he becomes Prince of Helium, however, the sudden breakdown of the Atmosphere Plant that sustains the planets waning air supply endangers all life on Barsoom. In a desperate attempt to save the inhabitants, Carter uses a secret telepathic code to enter the factory. Carter then succumbs to asphyxiation, only to back on Earth, left to wonder what has become of Barsoom. John Carter, An Earthman from Virginia with a mysterious background, at the wars end he goes prospecting for gold in Arizona. After various adventures, including an attack by Apaches, he is transported to Mars
33.
Parallel evolution
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Parallel evolution is the development of a similar trait in related, but distinct, species descending from the same ancestor, but from different clades. However the criteria for defining convergent as opposed to parallel evolution often are unclear in practice, however, this distinction is not clear-cut. For one thing, the conditions are partly a matter of degree. Some scientists accordingly have argued that evolution and convergent evolution are more or less indistinguishable. Others insist that in practice we should not shy away from the area because many important distinctions between parallel and convergent evolution remain. When the ancestral forms are unspecified or unknown, or the range of traits considered is not clearly specified and that period of separation would have permitted the accumulation of many relevant differences. Stephen Jay Gould differed, he described some of the examples as having started from the common ancestor of all marsupials and placentals. In contrast, where quite different structures clearly have been co-opted to a form and function. For example, consider Mixotricha paradoxa, a microbe which has assembled a system of rows of apparent cilia. However, on inspection it turns out that in Mixotricha paradoxa, what appear to be cilia actually are smaller symbiont microorganisms, the definition of a trait is crucial in deciding whether a change is seen as divergent, or as parallel or convergent. A similar situation occurs considering the homology of morphological structures, for example, many insects possess two pairs of flying wings. In beetles, the first pair of wings is hardened into elytra, wing covers with little role in flight, similar to convergent evolution, evolutionary relay describes how independent species acquire similar characteristics through their evolution in similar ecosystems, but not at the same time, such as. Colouration that serves as a warning to predators and for mating displays has evolved in different species. In the plant kingdom, the most familiar examples of evolution are the forms of leaves. Some extinct archosaurs evolved an upright posture and likely were warm-blooded and these two characteristics are also found in most mammals. Interestingly, modern crocodiles have a four chambered heart and a crurotarsal, the extinct pterosaurs and the birds both evolved wings as well as a distinct beak, but not from a recent common ancestor. Internal fertilization has evolved independently in sharks, some amphibians and amniotes, the patagium is a fleshy membrane that is found in gliding mammals such as flying lemurs, flying squirrels, sugar gliders and the extinct Volaticotherium. These mammals all acquired the patagium independently, pyrotherians evolved a body plan similar to proboscideans
34.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is an American author of novels, childrens books, and short stories, mainly in the genres of fantasy and science fiction. She has also written poetry and essays, first published in the 1960s, her work has often depicted futuristic or imaginary alternative worlds in politics, the natural environment, gender, religion, sexuality and ethnography. In 2016, The New York Times described her as Americas greatest living science fiction writer and she influenced such Booker Prize winners and other writers as Salman Rushdie and David Mitchell – and notable science fiction and fantasy writers including Neil Gaiman and Iain Banks. She has won the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Locus Award, in 2014, she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In 2003 she was made a Grandmaster of Science Fiction, one of only a handful of writers to take the top honour in a genre that has come to be dominated by male writers. Le Guin has resided in Portland, Oregon, since 1959, Ursula Kroeber is the daughter of UC Berkeley anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber and writer Theodora Kracaw. Ursula and her three brothers, Clifton, Theodore, and Karl Kroeber, were encouraged to read and were exposed to their parents dynamic friend group. Le Guin has stated that, in retrospect, she is grateful for the ease, even though I didnt pay much attention, I heard a lot of interesting, grown-up conversation. She was interested in biology and poetry, but found math difficult, Le Guin attended Berkeley High School. She received her B. A. in Renaissance French and Italian literature from Radcliffe College in 1951, soon after, Le Guin began her Ph. D. work and won a Fulbright grant to continue her studies in France from 1953 to 1954. In 1953, while traveling to France, Le Guin met her future husband and they married later that year in Paris. After marrying, Le Guin chose not to continue her studies of the poet Jean Lemaire de Belges. The couple returned to the US so that he could pursue his Ph. D. at Emory University, during this time, she worked as a secretary and taught French at the university level. Their first child, Elisabeth, was born in Moscow, Idaho, in 1959 the Le Guins moved to Portland, Oregon, where their daughter Caroline was born, and where they still reside. Charles is Emeritus Professor of History at Portland State University, during this time, she continued to make time for writing in addition to maintaining her family life. In 1964, her child, Theodore, was born. Le Guin became interested in literature quite early, at age 11, she submitted her first story to the magazine Astounding Science Fiction. She continued writing but did not attempt to publish for ten years, from 1951 to 1961 she wrote five novels, which publishers rejected because they seemed inaccessible
35.
The Left Hand of Darkness
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The Left Hand of Darkness is a science fiction novel by Ursula K. The novel became popular, in 1970 it won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel, and established Le Guins status as a major author of science fiction. The novel follows the story of Genly Ai, a native of Terra, who is sent to the planet of Gethen as an envoy of the Ekumen, a loose confederation of planets. Ais mission is to persuade the nations of Gethen to join the Ekumen, individuals on Gethen are ambisexual, with no fixed gender identity. This fact has an influence on the culture of the planet. Left Hand was among the first books published in the feminist science fiction genre and is the most famous examination of androgyny in science fiction, the theme of gender also touched off a feminist debate when it was first published, over depictions of the ambisexual Gethenians. The novel is part of the Hainish Cycle, a series of novels and short stories by Le Guin set in the fictional Hainish universe, which she introduced in 1964 with The Dowry of the Angyar. Among the Hainish novels, it was preceded in the sequence of writing by City of Illusions, Left Hand has been reprinted more than 30 times, and received a highly positive response from reviewers. It was voted the Hugo and Nebula awards by fans and writers, respectively, clarkes Childhoods End in a 1975 poll in Locus magazine. In 1987, Locus ranked it second among science fiction novels after Dune and Harold Bloom stated, Le Guin, more than Tolkien, has raised fantasy into high literature, for our time. Le Guins father Alfred Louis Kroeber was an anthropologist, and the experience that this gave Le Guin influenced all of her works. The protagonists of many of Le Guins novels, such as The Left Hand of Darkness and Rocannons World, are also anthropologists or social investigators of some kind. Le Guin uses the term Ekumen for her fictional alliance of worlds, a term coined by her father, Le Guins interest in Taoism influenced much of her science fiction work. According to Douglas Barbour, the fiction of the Hainish Universe contain a theme of balance between light and darkness, a theme of Taoism. She was also influenced by her early interest in mythology, and her protagonists are frequently interested in the cultures they are investigating, and are motivated to preserve them rather than conquer them. Authors who influenced Le Guin include Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, Italo Calvino, Le Guin identifies with feminism, and is interested in non-violence and ecological awareness. She has participated in demonstrations against the Vietnam War and nuclear weapons and these sympathies can be seen in several of her works of fiction, including those in the Hainish universe. Her fiction also frequently challenges accepted depictions of race and gender, the original 1969 edition of The Left Hand of Darkness did not contain an introduction
36.
The Dispossessed
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The Dispossessed, An Ambiguous Utopia is a 1974 utopian science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, set in the fictional universe as that of The Left Hand of Darkness. The book won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1974 and it features the development of the mathematical theory underlying the fictional ansible, an instantaneous communications device that plays a critical role in Le Guins Hainish Cycle. The invention of the places the novel first in the internal chronology of the Hainish Cycle. The Dispossessed is set on Anarres and Urras, the inhabited worlds of Tau Ceti. Cetians are mentioned in other Ekumen novels and short stories, an Anarresti appears in the short story The Shobies Story. Urras before the settlement of Anarres is the setting for the short story The Day Before the Revolution, in The Dispossessed, Urras is divided into several states and dominated by the two largest ones, which are rivals. Other parties represent various dissident visions of socialism, beyond that, there is a third major, though underdeveloped, area called Benbili—when a revolution supported by Thu breaks out there, A-Io invades, generating a proxy war. Although there are a variety of parties in A-Io, there are no political parties on Anarres. The chapters alternate between the worlds, and time—even-numbered chapters are set on Anarres and earlier in time, odd-numbered chapters are set on Urras, the only exceptions are the first and the last chapters which include both worlds and are, thematically, chapters of transition. In chapter one, we are basically in the middle of the story, with Shevek leaving Anarres, the penultimate chapter is the last one set in Anarres, and ends at a point before the first chapter begins. Shevek, a physicist working on a new theory of time finds his work blocked by a jealous superior and his physics work is further disrupted by the need for him to perform manual labor during a drought in this anarchist society. He arranges to go to Urras to finish and publish his theory, arriving on Urras, Shevek is feted. Shevek soon finds himself digusted with the social, sexual and political conventions of the hierarchical capitalist society he is in and he joins in a labor protest that is violently suppressed and he escapes to safety. Finally he is sponsored by ambassadors of Earth who provide him safe passage back to Anarres, the story takes place on the fictional planet Urras and its habitable twin Anarres. Before this, Anarres had had no permanent settlements apart from some mining facilities, the economic and political situation of Anarres and its relation to Urras is ambiguous. The ambiguity of Anarres situation is symbolically manifested in the low wall surrounding Anarres single spaceport, signs may be seen - where the book begins and ends. The protagonist Shevek is a physicist attempting to develop a General Temporal Theory, the physics of the book describes time as having a much deeper, more complex structure than we understand it
37.
Humanoid
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A humanoid is something that has an appearance resembling a human being. The earliest recorded use of the term, in 1870, referred to indigenous peoples in areas colonized by Europeans, by the 20th century, the term came to describe fossils which were morphologically similar, but not identical, to those of the human skeleton. Although this usage was common in the sciences for much of the 20th century, American psychologist and Dinosaur intelligence theorist Harry Jerison suggested the possibility of sapient dinosaurs. In a 1978 presentation at the American Psychological Association, he speculated that dromiceiomimus could have evolved into an intelligent species like human beings. In his book, Wonderful Life, Stephen Jay Gould argues that if the tape of life were re-wound and played back, over geologic time, Russell noted that there had been a steady increase in the encephalization quotient or EQ among the dinosaurs. Russell had discovered the first Troodontid skull, and noted that, while its EQ was low compared to humans, if the trend in Troodon evolution had continued to the present, its brain case could by now measure 1,100 cm3, comparable to that of a human. Troodontids had semi-manipulative fingers, able to grasp and hold objects to a certain degree, Russell proposed that this Dinosauroid, like most dinosaurs of the troodontid family, would have had large eyes and three fingers on each hand, one of which would have been partially opposed. As with most modern reptiles, he conceived of its genitalia as internal, Russell speculated that it would have required a navel, as a placenta aids the development of a large brain case. However, it would not have possessed mammary glands, and would have fed its young, as birds do and he speculated that its language would have sounded somewhat like bird song. Russells thought experiment has been met with criticism from other paleontologists since the 1980s, gregory S. Paul and Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. A humanoid robot does not necessarily look convincingly like a real person, an android or gynoid is a humanoid robot designed to look as much like a real person as possible, although these words are frequently perceived to be synonymous with humanoid. While there are many humanoid robots in fictional stories, some humanoid robots have been developed since the 1990s. Similarly to robots, virtual avatars may also be called humanoid when resembling humans, deities are often imagined in human shape, sometimes as hybrids. In animism in general, the spirits innate in certain objects are typically depicted in human shape, e. g. spirits of trees, of the woodlands, of wells or waterways, many aliens in television and science fiction films are presented as humanoid. This is usually attributed to budget constraints, as human actors can more easily portray human-like aliens, in much of science fiction, the reason for the abundance of humanoid aliens is not explained and usually requires suspension of disbelief. In some cases, however, explanations have been offered for this, in the field of ufology, humanoid refers to any of the claimed extraterrestrials which abduct human victims, such as the Greys, the Reptilians, Nordics, and Martians. In fantasy settings the term humanoid is used to refer to a fantastical creature, such as a dwarf, elf, gnome, halfling, goblin, troll, orc or an ogre. Animals that are humanoid are also shown in fantasy, humanoids are also used in some old horror movies, for example in Creature From the Black Lagoon, made in 1954 by Jack Arnold
38.
Star Trek
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Star Trek is an American science fiction media franchise based on the television series created by Gene Roddenberry. The first television series, simply called Star Trek and now referred to as The Original Series, debuted in 1966 and it followed the interstellar adventures of Captain James T. Kirk and his crew aboard the starship USS Enterprise, an exploration vessel. The Star Trek canon of the franchise include The Original Series, a series, four spin-off television series, its film franchise. In creating Star Trek, Roddenberry was inspired by the Horatio Hornblower novels, the satirical book Gullivers Travels and these adventures continued in the short-lived Star Trek, The Animated Series and six feature films. The adventures of The Next Generation crew continued in four feature films. In 2009, the franchise underwent a reboot set in an alternate timeline, or Kelvin Timeline. This film featured a new cast portraying younger versions of the crew from the show, their adventures were continued in the sequel film. The thirteenth film feature and sequel, Star Trek Beyond, was released to coincide with the franchises 50th anniversary, a new Star Trek TV series, titled Star Trek, Discovery, will premiere in May 2017 on the digital platform CBS All Access. Star Trek has been a phenomenon for decades. Fans of the franchise are called Trekkies or Trekkers, the franchise spans a wide range of spin-offs including games, figurines, novels, toys, and comics. Star Trek had an attraction in Las Vegas that opened in 1998. At least two museum exhibits of props travel the world, the series has its own full-fledged constructed language, Klingon. Several parodies have been made of Star Trek, in addition, viewers have produced several fan productions. As of July 2016, the franchise had generated $10 billion in revenue, Star Trek is noted for its cultural influence beyond works of science fiction. The franchise is also noted for its civil rights stances. The Original Series included one of televisions first multiracial casts, Star Trek references can be found throughout popular culture from movies such as the submarine thriller Crimson Tide to the animated series South Park. As early as 1964, Gene Roddenberry drafted a proposal for the series that would become Star Trek
39.
Star Trek: The Next Generation
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Star Trek, The Next Generation is an American science fiction television series in the Star Trek franchise created by Gene Roddenberry that ran between 1987 and 1994. Roddenberry, Maurice Hurley, Rick Berman, Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor served as producers at different times throughout its production. The series involves a starship named Enterprise and is set in the regions of the Milky Way galaxy. The first episode takes place in the year 2364,100 years after the start of the mission described in the original series. It features a new cast and a new starship Enterprise, the fifth to bear the name within the franchises storyline and these are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission, to strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations. TNG premiered the week of September 28,1987, drawing 27 million viewers, in total,176 episodes were made, ending with the two-hour finale All Good Things. The week of May 23,1994, the series was broadcast in first-run syndication with dates and times varying among individual television stations. Three additional Star Trek spin-offs followed The Next Generation, Star Trek, Deep Space Nine, Star Trek, Voyager, and Star Trek, Enterprise. The series formed the basis for the seventh through to the tenth of the Star Trek films, and is also the setting of novels, comic books. In its seventh season, Star Trek, The Next Generation became the first, the series received a number of accolades including 19 Emmy Awards, two Hugo Awards, five Saturn Awards, and a Peabody Award. The series follows the adventures of a crew on board the starship USS Enterprise, the fifth Federation vessel to bear the name and registry. The series is set about 70 years after the mission of the original Enterprise crew under the command of James T. Kirk. Beverly Crusher, conn officer Lieutenant Geordi La Forge, and junior officer Lieutenant Worf, the death of Lieutenant Yar in the series first season prompts an internal shuffle of personnel, making Worf official chief of security. Geordi La Forge is promoted to engineer at the beginning of season 2. The series begins with the crew of the Enterprise-D put on trial by a nefarious, the god-like entity threatens the extinction of mankind for being a race of savages, forcing them to solve a mystery at nearby Farpoint Station to prove their worthiness to be spared. After successfully solving the mystery and avoiding disaster, the crew departs on its mission to explore strange new worlds. Subsequent stories focus on the discovery of new life and sociological and political relationships with alien cultures, several new species are introduced as recurring antagonists, including the Ferengi, the Cardassian, and the Borg
40.
The Chase (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
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The Chase is the 146th episode of the syndicated American science fiction television series Star Trek, The Next Generation, the 20th episode of the sixth season. It is directed by series cast member Jonathan Frakes, set in the 24th century, the series follows the adventures of the crew of the Federation starship USS Enterprise-D. In this episode, four competing expeditions—Federation, Klingon, Cardassian, Enterprise Captain Picard has always been a student of archaeology, and in this episode he is contacted by his former mentor Professor Richard Galen. The professor, who Picard said is like the father who understood me, Galen, however, will not tell him about what he has found unless Picard agrees to go with him, which means leaving the Enterprise and his career in Starfleet behind. Picard ultimately declines, although he is torn about disappointing his former mentor, maintaining a dull and bloated empire. Shortly after angrily leaving the Enterprise, Galens transport vessel is attacked and boarded. When the Enterprise arrives, Galen is beamed to Sickbay and has just enough energy before he dies to apologize for his rude remarks, saying Jean-Luc. Picard is fueled by this event and decides to assume Professor Galens research, an investigation of Galens ship yields no results other than a series of seemingly random number blocks. After studying the ambiguous number blocks for hours, the discovery is made that these fragments are compatible DNA strands which have been recovered from different worlds all over the galaxy and this would ultimately explain why so many races are humanoid. They encounter Klingon and Cardassian ships that appear to be on the trail as themselves. These two groups believe, respectively, that the puzzle will yield the design of a formidable weapon, using the shared information, they determine a pattern in how several planets were aligned millions of years ago and extrapolate the position of a final planet. The Cardassians warp off ahead of the others, firing at both ships to disable them, however, Picard had already learned of the Cardassians attempt to sabotage the Enterprises defenses, the ship is fully functional, and he takes the Klingon captain to the last planet. The Cardassians arrive, as well as an undetected Romulan force, reasoning that the seabed may not be completely fossilized, Picard and Dr. Crusher scan the sea-bed with their tricorder while the other parties argue. They locate the final DNA fragment, which completes and runs the program, the program reconfigures the tricorders emitter to project a holographic message. The recorded image of an alien humanoid is projected to the assembled company, the alien ends its message by saying that it hopes that the knowledge of a common origin will help produce peace. The Cardassians are outraged at this, as are the Klingons, only the Federation representatives seem optimistic. The episode ends with all parties diverging, but the Commander of the Romulan ship contacts Picard and hints that One day
41.
Flash Gordon
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Flash Gordon is the hero of a space opera adventure comic strip created by and originally drawn by Alex Raymond. First published January 7,1934, the strip was inspired by, the Flash Gordon comic strip has been translated into a wide variety of media, including motion pictures, television and animated series. The latest version, a Flash Gordon television series, appeared on the Syfy channel in the United States in 2007–2008. At first King Features tried to purchase the rights to the John Carter of Mars stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs, however, King Features then turned to Alex Raymond, one of their staff artists, to create the story. Raymonds first samples were dismissed for not containing enough action sequences, Raymond reworked the story and sent it back to the syndicate, who accepted it. Raymond was partnered with ghostwriter Don Moore, an experienced editor, Raymonds first Flash Gordon story appeared in January 1934, alongside Jungle Jim. The Flash Gordon strip was well received by readers, becoming one of the most popular American comic strips of the 1930s. Like Buck Rogers, the success of Flash Gordon resulted in numerous licensed products being sold, including books, colouring books. The comic strip follows the adventures of Flash Gordon, a polo player and Yale University graduate. The story begins with Earth threatened by a collision with the planet Mongo, Dr. Zarkov invents a rocket ship to fly into space in an attempt to stop the disaster. Half mad, he kidnaps Flash and Dale and they travel to the planet, landing on the planet, and halting the collision, they come into conflict with Ming the Merciless, Mongos evil ruler. They are joined in early adventures by Prince Thun of the Lion Men. Eventually, Ming is overthrown, and Mongo is ruled by a council of leaders led by Barin, Flash and friends return to Earth and have some adventures before returning to Mongo and crashing in the kingdom of Tropica, then reuniting with Barin and others. Flash and his friends travel to worlds and return to Mongo. In the 1950s, Flash became an astronaut who travelled to other planets besides Mongo, the long story of the Skorpii War takes Flash to other star systems, using starships that are faster than light. After Raymonds tenure, later created new enemies for Flash to combat. Austin Briggs created Kang the Cruel, Mings callous son, Prince Polon, who had the power to shrink or enlarge living creatures, the unscrupulous Queen Rubia, and Pyron the Comet Master were among the antagonists introduced during Mac Raboys run. The Skorpi, a race of alien shape shifters who desired to conquer the galaxy, were recurring villains in both the Mac Raboy and Dan Barry stories, the Skorpi space-fighter ace Baron Dak-Tula became a periodic nemesis of Flash in the late 1970s stories
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Flash Gordon (serial)
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Flash Gordon is a 1936 science fiction film serial. Shown in 13 chapters, it was the first screen adventure for the comic-strip character Flash Gordon that was invented by Alex Raymond only two earlier in 1934. It tells the story of Flash Gordons first visit to the planet Mongo, Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers, Charles Middleton, Priscilla Lawson and Frank Shannon played the central roles. In 1996, Flash Gordon was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being culturally, historically, the Planet of Peril The planet Mongo is on a collision course with Earth. Dr. Alexis Zarkov takes off in a ship to Mongo, with Flash Gordon. They find that the planet is ruled by the cruel Emperor Ming, Mings daughter, Princess Aura, tries to spare Flashs life. The Tunnel of Terror Aura helps Flash to escape as Zarkov is put to work in Mings laboratory, Flash meets Prince Thun, leader of the Lion Men, and the pair return to the palace to rescue Dale. Captured by Shark Men Flash stops the ceremony, but he and Dale are captured by King Kala, ruler of the Shark Men. At Mings order, Kala forces Flash to fight with a giant octosak in a filling with water. Battling the Sea Beast Aura and Thun rescue Flash from the octosak, trying to keep Flash away from Dale, Aura destroys the mechanisms that regulate the underwater city. The Destroying Ray Flash, Dale, Aura and Thun escape from the city, but are captured by King Vultan. Dr. Zarkov befriends Prince Barin, and they race to the rescue, flaming Torture Dale pretends to fall in love with King Vultan in order to save Flash, Barin and Thun, who are put to work in the Hawkmens Atom Furnaces. Shattering Doom Flash, Barin, Thun and Zarkov create an explosion in the atomic furnaces, Tournament of Death Dr. Zarkov saves the Hawkmens city from falling, earning Flash and his friends King Vultans gratitude. Ming insists that Flash fight a Tournament of Death against an opponent, revealed to be Barin. Fighting the Fire Dragon Flash survives the tournament with Auras help, still determined to win Flash, Aura has him drugged to make him lose his memory. The Unseen Peril Flash recovers his memory, Ming is determined to have Flash executed. In the Claws of the Tigron Zarkov invents a machine that makes Flash invisible, Flash torments Ming and his guards. Barin hides Dale in the catacombs, but Aura has her tracked by a tigron, trapped in the Turret Aura realizes the error of her ways, and falls in love with Barin
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Robert A. Heinlein
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Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science-fiction writer. Often called the dean of science writers, his controversial works continue to have an influential effect on the genre. Heinlein became one of the first science-fiction writers to break into mainstream magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s. He was one of the best-selling science-fiction novelists for many decades, and he, Isaac Asimov and he also speculated on the influence of space travel on human cultural practices. Heinlein was named the first Science Fiction Writers Grand Master in 1974 and he also anticipated mechanical Computer Aided Design with Drafting Dan and described a modern version of a waterbed in his novel The Door into Summer, though he never patented or built one. In the first chapter of the novel Space Cadet he anticipated the cell-phone,35 years before Motorola invented the technology, several of Heinleins works have been adapted for film and television. Heinlein was born on July 7,1907 to Rex Ivar Heinlein and Bam Lyle Heinlein, in Butler and he was a 6th-generation German-American, a family tradition had it that Heinleins fought in every American war starting with the War of Independence. His childhood was spent in Kansas City, Missouri, Heinleins experience in the U. S. Navy exerted a strong influence on his character and writing. He graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland with the class of 1929 and he was assigned to the new aircraft carrier USS Lexington in 1931, where he worked in radio communications, then in its earlier phases, with the carriers aircraft. The captain of this carrier was Ernest J. King, who served as the Chief of Naval Operations and Commander-in-Chief. Heinlein was frequently interviewed during his later years by historians who asked him about Captain King. Heinlein also served aboard the destroyer USS Roper in 1933 and 1934, reaching the rank of lieutenant. His brother, Lawrence Heinlein, served in the U. S. Army, the U. S. Air Force, and the Missouri National Guard, in 1929, Heinlein married Elinor Curry of Kansas City in Los Angeles, and their marriage lasted about a year. His second marriage in 1932 to Leslyn MacDonald lasted for 15 years, in 1934, Heinlein was discharged from the Navy due to pulmonary tuberculosis. During a lengthy hospitalization, he developed a design for a waterbed, Heinlein supported himself at several occupations, including real estate sales and silver mining, but for some years found money in short supply. Heinlein was active in Upton Sinclairs socialist End Poverty in California movement in the early 1930s, when Sinclair gained the Democratic nomination for Governor of California in 1934, Heinlein worked actively in the campaign. Heinlein himself ran for the California State Assembly in 1938, but was unsuccessful, while not destitute after the campaign—he had a small disability pension from the Navy—Heinlein turned to writing in order to pay off his mortgage. His first published story, Life-Line, was printed in the August 1939 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction, originally written for a contest, it was instead sold to Astounding for significantly more than the contests first-prize payoff
