1.
Space Frontier Foundation
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Its advocate members design and lead a collection of projects with goals that align to the organizations goals as described by its credo. The Space Frontier Foundation is an organization of people dedicated to opening the Space Frontier to human settlement as rapidly as possible. Our goals include protecting the Earth’s fragile biosphere and creating a freer and more life for each generation by using the unlimited energy. Our purpose is to unleash the power of enterprise and lead a united humanity permanently into the Solar System. They knew this was not happening under the centrally planned. Since 2005 the Foundation has relied heavily on NASA funding including a recent $110,000 award for business competition, thomas Olson appeared on The Space Show to promote the competition. The competition takes place during the Foundations New-Space 12 conference, which is sponsored by NASA, the Foundation supported the George W. Bush Administrations Vision for Space Exploration. In March,2005, the Foundation praised the selection of Dr. Michael Griffin as the administrator of NASA. A press release said Mike Griffin will be a captain for NASA. Bob Werb, the Foundation Chairman, said Mike Griffin knows more about space, vision-killing bureaucrats inside and outside of government should be trembling in their boots. Richard Tumlinson said, This bodes well for the emerging New Space industry, the Foundation has been critical of the U. S. governments efforts in space, particularly those of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. For example, the Foundation has criticized NASAs Space Shuttle and Ares I, the Foundation’s current strategic focus is to enable the growth of the NewSpace community. The Foundation is an executive member of the Alliance for Space Development. The Foundations membership is composed of volunteers who typically fall into one of two groups, regular members donate time and money as they can in accordance with other demands upon them. Advocate members are those who are invited to step to the level and help run the projects, start new ones. Advocates are those who have demonstrated a degree of understanding. Advocates are asked to donate time and money on a regular basis and are the voting members that decide elections for the Foundations Board of Directors. Projects are the means by which the Foundation acts in support of its goals
2.
Subgenre
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Genre is any form or type of communication in any mode with socially-agreed upon conventions developed over time. Genres form by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented, often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, some genres may be rigid with strictly adhered to guidelines while others may be very flexible. Genre began as a classification system for ancient Greek literature. Poetry, prose, and performance each had a specific and calculated style that related to the theme of the story. Speech patterns for comedy would not be appropriate for tragedy, in later periods genres proliferated and developed in response to changes in audiences and creators. Genre became a tool to help the public make sense out of unpredictable art. Because art is often a response to a state, in that people write/paint/sing/dance about what they know about. Genre suffers from the ills of any classification system. Genre is to be reassessed and scrutinized, and to works on their unique merit. While the genre of storytelling has been relegated as lesser form of art because of the heavily borrowed nature of the conventions, proponents argue that the genius of an effective genre piece is in the variation, recombination, and evolution of the codes. The term genre is used in the history and criticism of visual art. These are distinguished from staffage, incidental figures in what is primarily a landscape or architectural painting, Genre painting may also be used as a wider term covering genre painting proper, and other specialized types of paintings such as still-life, landscapes, marine paintings and animal paintings. The concept of the hierarchy of genres was a one in artistic theory. It was strongest in France, where it was associated with the Académie française which held a role in academic art. Genres may be determined by technique, tone, content. Genre should not be confused with age category, by which literature may be classified as adult, young adult. They also must not be confused with format, such as novel or picture book
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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
4.
Western (genre)
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Cowboys and gunslingers typically wear Stetson hats, bandannas, spurs, cowboy boots and buckskins. Other characters include Native Americans, bandits, lawmen, bounty hunters, outlaws, mounted cavalry, settlers, Westerns often stress the harshness of the wilderness and frequently set the action in an arid, desolate landscape of deserts and mountains. Often, the vast landscape plays an important role, presenting a. mythic vision of the plains, specific settings include ranches, small frontier towns, saloons, railways and isolated military forts of the Wild West. Many Westerns use a plot of depicting a crime, then showing the pursuit of the wrongdoer, ending in revenge and retribution. The Western was the most popular Hollywood genre, from the early 20th century to the 1960s, Western films first became well-attended in the 1930s. John Fords landmark Western adventure Stagecoach became one of the biggest hits in 1939, Westerns were very popular throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Many of the most acclaimed Westerns were released during this time – including High Noon, Shane, The Searchers, the Western depicts a society organized around codes of honor and personal, direct or private justice–frontier justice–dispensed by gunfights. These honor codes are played out through depictions of feuds or individuals seeking personal revenge or retribution against someone who has wronged them. The popular perception of the Western is a story that centers on the life of a semi-nomadic wanderer, a showdown or duel at high noon featuring two or more gunfighters is a stereotypical scene in the popular conception of Westerns. In some ways, such protagonists may be considered the descendants of the knight errant which stood at the center of earlier extensive genres such as the Arthurian Romances. And like knights errant, the heroes of Westerns frequently rescue damsels in distress, similarly, the wandering protagonists of Westerns share many characteristics with the ronin in modern Japanese culture. The Western typically takes these elements and uses them to tell simple morality tales, Westerns often stress the harshness and isolation of the wilderness and frequently set the action in an arid, desolate landscape. Apart from the wilderness, it is usually the saloon that emphasizes that this is the Wild West, it is the place to go for music, women, gambling, drinking, brawling and shooting. The American Film Institute defines western films as those set in the American West that embodies the spirit, the struggle, the term Western, used to describe a narrative film genre, appears to have originated with a July 1912 article in Motion Picture World Magazine. Most of the characteristics of Western films were part of 19th century popular Western fiction and were firmly in place before film became an art form. Protagonists ride between dusty towns and cattle ranches on their trusty steeds, Western films were enormously popular in the silent film era. With the advent of sound in 1927-28, the major Hollywood studios rapidly abandoned Westerns, leaving the genre to smaller studios and these smaller organizations churned out countless low-budget features and serials in the 1930s. Released through United Artists, Stagecoach made John Wayne a mainstream star in the wake of a decade of headlining B westerns
5.
Ray gun
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A raygun is a type of fictional device that fires a beam of destructive energy used in science fiction, a form of directed-energy weapon. They have various names, ray gun, death ray, beam gun, blaster, laser gun, phaser. They are a feature of science fiction, for such stories they typically have the general function of guns. Real-life analogues are particle-beam weapons or electrolasers, electroshock weapons which send current along an electrically conductive laser-induced plasma channel, a very early example of a raygun is the Heat-Ray featured in H. G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds. Science fiction during the 1920s described death rays, early science fiction often described or depicted raygun beams making bright light and loud noise like lightning or large electric arcs. Sanson has placed a ray-gun there, all depends on the air-scouts, and we must hold our positions until the battle-planes arrive. The variant ray projector was used by John W. Campbell in The Black Star Passes in 1930, the term ray gun had already become cliché by the 1940s, in part due to association with the comic strips Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. Soon after the invention of lasers during 1960, such devices became briefly fashionable as a weapon for science fiction stories. For instance, characters of the Lost in Space TV series, by the late 1960s and 1970s, as the lasers limits as a weapon became evident, rayguns were dubbed phasers, blasters, pulse rifles, plasma rifles and so forth. He further analyses the problem of power sources. In contrast to their counterparts, the batteries or power packs of even handheld weapons are minute, durable. This effect could sometimes be attributed to the heating atmosphere that it was passing through. Some of the effects are what would be expected from a powerful beam, if it could be generated in reality, Ray guns are often shown as transmitting heat. Ray guns may be used to cut hard materials like a blowtorch. But sometimes not, In movies, rays are often depicted as having effect instantaneously, raygun victims are generally killed instantaneously, often – as in the Star Wars films – without showing visible wounds or even holes in their clothing. Some rayguns cause their targets to disappear entirely, personal equipment and this would only happen if the momentum of the beam were comparable to that of a bullet shot from a gun. A wide range of functions as determined by the requirements of the story, for instance, they may stun, paralyze or knock down a target. Occasionally the rays may have effects, such as the freeze rays in the TV series Batman
6.
Firefly (TV series)
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Firefly is an American space western drama television series created by writer and director Joss Whedon, under his Mutant Enemy Productions label. Whedon served as a producer, along with Tim Minear. The series is set in the year 2517, after the arrival of humans in a new system and follows the adventures of the renegade crew of Serenity. The ensemble cast portrays the nine characters who live on Serenity, Whedon pitched the show as nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things. In this future, the two surviving superpowers, the United States and China, fused to form the central federal government, called the Alliance. According to Whedons vision, nothing will change in the future, technology will advance, but we still have the same political, moral. Firefly premiered in the U. S. on the Fox network on September 20,2002, by mid-December, Firefly had averaged 4.7 million viewers per episode and was 98th in Nielsen ratings. It was canceled after eleven of the fourteen produced episodes were aired, despite the relatively short life span of the series, it received strong sales when it was released on DVD and has large fan support campaigns. It won a Primetime Emmy Award in 2003 for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series, TV Guide ranked the series at No.5 on their 2013 list of 60 shows that were Cancelled Too Soon. The series takes place in the year 2517, on a variety of planets, the TV series does not reveal whether these celestial bodies are within one star system, only saying that Serenitys mode of propulsion is a gravity-drive. The film Serenity makes clear that all the planets and moons are in one large system, the emigrants established themselves in this new star system, with dozens of planets and hundreds of moons. Many of these were terraformed, a process in which a planet or moon is altered to resemble Earth and this resulted in many of the border planets and moons having forbidding, dry environments, well-suited to the Western genre. The show takes its name from the Firefly-class spaceship, Serenity and it resembles a firefly in general arrangement, and the tail section, analogous to a bioluminescent insectoid abdomen, lights up during acceleration. The ship was named after the Battle of Serenity Valley, where Malcolm Reynolds, former sergeant in the Independents and it is revealed in Bushwhacked that the Battle of Serenity Valley is widely considered the loss which sealed the fate of the Independents. Throughout the series, the Alliance is shown to govern the system through an organization of core planets. The central planets are firmly under Alliance control, but the planets and moons resemble the 19th-century American West. Settlers and refugees on the worlds have relative freedom from the central government. In addition, the areas of space are inhabited by the Reavers
7.
Space opera
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Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, melodramatic adventure, interplanetary battles, as well as chivalric romance, and often risk-taking. Set mainly or entirely in space, it usually involves conflict between opponents possessing advanced abilities, futuristic weapons, and other sophisticated technology. The term has no relation to music, but is instead a play on the soap opera and horse opera. Space operas emerged in the 1930s and they continue to be produced in literature, film, comics, notable space opera novels include the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, the Lensman series by E. E. Smith and the Enders Game series by Orson Scott Card. An early notable space opera film was Flash Gordon created by Alex Raymond, in the late 1970s, the Star Wars franchise created by George Lucas brought a great deal of attention to the subgenre. Space opera is defined as an adventure science-fiction story, the term space opera was coined in 1941 by fan writer and author Wilson Tucker as a pejorative term in an article in issue 36 of science fiction fanzine Le Zombie. At the time, serial dramas in the United States had become popularly known as soap operas because many were sponsored by soap manufacturers. Tucker defined space opera as the science fiction equivalent, a hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn, even earlier, the term horse opera had come into use as a term for Western films. Still, during the late 1920s and early 1930s, when the stories were printed in science-fiction magazines, beginning in the 1960s, and widely accepted by the 1970s, the space opera was redefined, following Brian Aldiss definition in Space Opera as the good old stuff. Yet soon after his redefinition, it began to be challenged, for example, by the practice and marketing of Judy-Lynn del Rey and in the reviews of her husband. In particular, they disputed the claims that space operas were obsolete, by the early 1980s, space operas were again redefined, and the label was attached to major popular culture works such as Star Wars. The term space opera began to be recognized only in the early 1990s as a genre of science fiction. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, early works related to but preceding the subgenre contained many elements of what would become space opera. They are today referred to as proto-space opera, defontenay and Lumen by Camille Flammarion. Not widely popular, proto-space operas were nevertheless occasionally written during the late Victorian and Edwardian science fiction era, examples may be found in the works of Percy Greg, Garrett P. Serviss, George Griffith and Robert Cromie. One critic cites Robert William Coles The Struggle for Empire, A Story of the Year 2236 as the first space opera, the novel does depict an interstellar conflict between solar men of Earth and a fierce humanoid race headquartered on Sirius. Despite this seemingly early beginning, it was not until the late 1920s that the opera proper began to appear regularly in pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories. In film, the genre began with the 1918 Danish film
8.
Gene Roddenberry
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Eugene Wesley Gene Roddenberry was an American television screenwriter and producer. He is best remembered for creating the original Star Trek television series, born in El Paso, Texas, Roddenberry grew up in Los Angeles, where his father was a police officer. Roddenberry flew 89 combat missions in the Army Air Forces during World War II, later, he followed in his fathers footsteps and joined the Los Angeles Police Department, where he also began to write scripts for television. As a freelance writer, Roddenberry wrote scripts for Highway Patrol, Have Gun–Will Travel, in 1964, Roddenberry created Star Trek, which premiered in 1966 and ran for three seasons before being canceled. He then worked on projects, including a string of failed television pilots. The syndication of Star Trek led to its popularity, this, in turn, resulted in the Star Trek feature films, on which Roddenberry continued to produce. He continued to consult on the series until his death in 1991, years after his death, Roddenberry was one of the first humans to have his ashes carried into earth orbit. The popularity of the Star Trek universe and films has inspired films, books, comic books, video games, and fan films set in the Star Trek universe. Roddenberry was born on August 19,1921, in his parents rented home in El Paso, Texas, the family moved to Los Angeles in 1923 after Genes father passed the Civil Service test and was given a police commission there. During his childhood, Roddenberry was interested in reading, especially magazines, and was a fan of stories such as John Carter of Mars, Tarzan. Roddenberry majored in science at Los Angeles City College, where he began dating Eileen-Anita Rexroat. He obtained a license through the United States Army Air Corps-sponsored Civilian Pilot Training Program. He enlisted with the USAAC on December 18,1941, and he graduated from the USAAC on August 5,1942, when he was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He was posted to Bellows Field, Oahu, to join the 394th Bomb Squadron, 5th Bombardment Group, of the Thirteenth Air Force, which flew the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. On August 2,1943, while flying out of Espiritu Santo, the plane Roddenberry was piloting overshot the runway by 500 feet and impacted trees, crushing the nose, the official report absolved Roddenberry of any responsibility. Roddenberry spent the remainder of his career in the United States. He was involved in a plane crash, this time as a passenger. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal, in 1945, Roddenberry began flying for Pan American World Airways, including routes from New York to Johannesburg or Calcutta, the two longest Pan Am routes at the time
9.
Star Trek: The Original Series
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Star Trek is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry that follows the adventures of the starship USS Enterprise and its crew. It later acquired the retronym of Star Trek, The Original Series to distinguish the show within the franchise that it began. The show is set in the Milky Way galaxy, roughly during the 2260s, the ship and crew are led by Captain James T. Kirk, first officer and science officer Spock, and chief medical officer Leonard McCoy. Shatners voice-over introduction during each episodes opening credits stated the purpose, Space. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise and its five-year mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. The series was produced from September 1966 to December 1967 by Norway Productions and Desilu Productions, Star Trek aired on NBC from September 8,1966 to June 3,1969 and was actually seen first on September 6,1966, on Canadas CTV network. Star Treks Nielsen ratings while on NBC were low, and the network cancelled it after three seasons and 79 episodes. Several years later, the became a bona fide hit in broadcast syndication, remaining so throughout the 1970s, achieving cult classic status. The series contains significant elements of Space Western, as described by Gene Roddenberry, on March 11,1964, Gene Roddenberry, a long-time fan of science fiction, drafted a short treatment for a science-fiction television series that he called Star Trek. This was to be set on board a large interstellar spaceship S. S. Yorktown in the 23rd century, whose crew was dedicated to exploring a small portion of our galaxy. Some of the influences on his idea that Roddenberry noted included A. E. van Vogts tales of the spaceship Space Beagle, Eric Frank Russells Marathon series of stories, and the film Forbidden Planet. Roddenberry also drew heavily from C. S. Foresters Horatio Hornblower novels that depict a sea captain who exercises broad discretionary authority on distant sea missions of noble purpose. Roddenberry often humorously referred to Captain Kirk as Horatio Hornblower in Space, Roddenberry had extensive experience in writing for series about the Old West that had been popular television fare earlier in the 1960s and the 1950s. Armed with this background, the first draft deliberately characterizes the new show as Wagon Train to the stars. Like the familiar Wagon Train, each episode was to be an adventure story, set within the overarching structure of a continuing journey. With the notable exception of Star Trek, Deep Space Nine, all future television, in Roddenberrys original concept, the protagonist was Captain Robert April of the starship S. S. Yorktown. This character was developed into Captain Christopher Pike, first portrayed by Jeffrey Hunter, in April 1964, Roddenberry presented the Star Trek draft to Desilu Productions, a leading independent television production company. He met with Herb Solow, Desilus Director of Production, Solow saw promise in the idea and signed a three-year program-development contract with Roddenberry
