1.
Apocalyptic literature
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Apocalyptic literature is a genre of prophetical writing that developed in post-Exilic Jewish culture and was popular among millennialist early Christians. Apocalypse is a Greek word meaning revelation, an unveiling or unfolding of things not previously known, as a genre, apocalyptic literature details the authors visions of the end times as revealed by an angel or other heavenly messenger. The apocalyptic literature of Judaism and Christianity embraces a considerable period, Apocalyptic elements can be detected in the prophetical books of Joel and Zechariah, while Isaiah chapters 24–27 and 33 present well-developed apocalypses. The Book of Daniel offers a fully matured and classic example of genre of literature. The non-fulfillment of prophecies served to popularize the methods of apocalyptic in comparison with the non-fulfillment of the advent of the Messianic kingdom. Some believe that the Messianic kingdom was not necessarily predicted to occur at the end of the seventy years of the Babylonian exile, but at some unspecified time in the future. The only thing for certain that was predicted is the return of the Jews to their land, thus, the fulfillment of the Messianic kingdom remained in the future for the Jews. This period was approximately 70 years, as prophesied by Jeremiah, the Book of Enoch, however, was not considered inspired Scripture by the Jews, so that any failed prophecy in it is of no consequence to the Jewish faith. The Greek empire of the East was overthrown by Rome, the fourth and last empire was declared to be Roman by the Apocalypse of Baruch chapters 36–40 and 4 Ezra 10, 60–12,35. Again, these two books were not considered inspired Scripture by the Jews, and thus were not authoritative on matters of prophecy, thus, it might be interpreted that Daniel was saying that Rome would be the last world power before the kingdom of God. Such ideas as those of the day of Yahweh and the new heavens, thus the inner development of Jewish apocalyptic was conditioned by the historical experiences of the nation. But the prophecies found in Jewish scriptures, which have not changed over time, another source of apocalyptic thought was primitive mythological and cosmological traditions, in which the eye of the seer could see the secrets of the future. Thus the six days of the creation, followed by a seventh of rest, were regarded as at once a history of the past. The object of literature in general was to square the righteousness of God with the suffering condition of His righteous servants on earth. Early Old Testament prophecy taught the need of personal and national righteousness, later prophecy incorporated an idea of future vindication of present evils, often including the idea of an afterlife. Apocalyptic prophets sketched in outline the history of the world and mankind, the origin of evil and its course, and the final consummation of all things. The righteous as a nation should yet possess the earth, either via an eternal Messianic kingdom on earth, or else in temporary blessedness here and eternal blessedness hereafter. Neither the prophets nor the authors are without conflict between their messages, however, and there are significant similarities between prophecy and apocalyptic writings
2.
Utopia
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A utopia is an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens. The opposite of a utopia is a dystopia and you could also say that utopia is a perfect place that has been made so there are no problems. The term has been used to describe intentional communities, the term utopia was coined from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island society in the Atlantic Ocean. The word comes from Greek, οὐ and τόπος and means no-place, however, in standard usage, the words meaning has narrowed and now usually describes a non-existent society that is intended to be viewed as considerably better than contemporary society. Eutopia, derived from Greek εὖ and τόπος, means good place, in English, eutopia and utopia are homophonous, which may have given rise to the change in meaning. Chronologically, the first recorded utopian proposal is Platos Republic, part conversation, part fictional depiction, and part policy proposal, Republic would categorize citizens into a rigid class structure of golden, silver, bronze and iron socioeconomic classes. The golden citizens are trained in a rigorous 50-year-long educational program to be benign oligarchs, plato stressed this structure many times in both quotes by him and in his published works, such as the Republic. The wisdom of these rulers will supposedly eliminate poverty and deprivation through fairly distributed resources, the educational program for the rulers is the central notion of the proposal. It has few laws, no lawyers and rarely sends its citizens to war, during the 16th century, Thomas Mores book Utopia proposed an ideal society of the same name. Some maintain the position that Mores Utopia functions only on the level of a satire, but the homophonic prefix eu-, meaning good, also resonates in the word, with the implication that the perfectly good place is really no place. Ecological utopian society describes new ways in which society should relate to nature and these works perceive a widening gap between the modern Western way of living that destroys nature and a more traditional way of living before industrialization. Ecological utopias may advocate a society that is more sustainable, according to the Dutch philosopher Marius de Geus, ecological utopias could be inspirational sources for movements involving green politics. Particularly in the early 19th century, several ideas arose. These ideas are often grouped in a utopian socialist movement. A once common characteristic is a distribution of goods, frequently with the total abolition of money. Citizens only do work which they enjoy and which is for the good, leaving them with ample time for the cultivation of the arts. One classic example of such a utopia was Edward Bellamys Looking Backward, Another socialist utopia is William Morriss News from Nowhere, written partially in response to the top-down nature of Bellamys utopia, which Morris criticized. However, as the socialist movement developed, it moved away from utopianism, in a materialist utopian society, the economy is perfect, there is no inflation, and only perfect social and financial equality exists
3.
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.
Thomas More
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Sir Thomas More, venerated by Roman Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was also a councillor to Henry VIII, and Lord High Chancellor of England from October 1529 to 16 May 1532 and he also wrote Utopia, published in 1516, about the political system of an imaginary ideal island nation. More opposed the Protestant Reformation, in particular the theology of Martin Luther, More also opposed the Kings separation from the Catholic Church, refusing to acknowledge Henry as Supreme Head of the Church of England and the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. After refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, he was convicted of treason, of his execution, he was reported to have said, I die the Kings good servant, but Gods first. Pope Pius XI canonised More in 1935 as a martyr, Pope John Paul II in 2000 declared him the heavenly Patron of Statesmen and Politicians. Since 1980, the Church of England has remembered More liturgically as a Reformation martyr, the Soviet Union honoured him for the Communist attitude toward property rights expressed in Utopia. From 1490 to 1492, More served John Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England, Morton enthusiastically supported the New Learning, and thought highly of the young More. Believing that More had great potential, Morton nominated him for a place at the University of Oxford, More began his studies at Oxford in 1492, and received a classical education. Studying under Thomas Linacre and William Grocyn, he became proficient in both Latin and Greek, More left Oxford after only two years—at his fathers insistence—to begin legal training in London at New Inn, one of the Inns of Chancery. In 1496, More became a student at Lincolns Inn, one of the Inns of Court, where he remained until 1502, according to his friend, theologian Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, More once seriously contemplated abandoning his legal career to become a monk. Between 1503 and 1504 More lived near the Carthusian monastery outside the walls of London, although he deeply admired their piety, More ultimately decided to remain a layman, standing for election to Parliament in 1504 and marrying the following year. In spite of his choice to pursue a career, More continued ascetic practices for the rest of his life, such as wearing a hair shirt next to his skin. A tradition of the Third Order of Saint Francis honours More as a member of that Order on their calendar of saints, More married Jane Colt in 1505. She was five years younger than her husband, quiet and good-natured, Erasmus reported that More wanted to give his young wife a better education than she had previously received at home, and tutored her in music and literature. The couple had four children before Jane died in 1511, Margaret, Elizabeth, Cicely, going against friends advice and common custom, within thirty days More had married one of the many eligible women among his wide circle of friends. He certainly expected a mother to care of his little children and, as the view of his time considered marriage as an economic union, he chose a rich widow. More was not viewed as being in haste to remarry for the gratification of sexual pleasure, as Alice was older than he, and their marriage was possibly not consummated. The speed of the marriage was so unusual that More had to get a dispensation of the banns, Alice More lacked Janes docility, Mores friend Andrew Ammonius derided Alice as a hook-nosed harpy
5.
Utopia (book)
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Utopia is a work of fiction and political philosophy by Thomas More published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting an island society and its religious. Many aspects of Mores description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries, the title De optimo rei publicae deque nova insula Utopia literally translates, Of a republics best state and of the new island Utopia. It is variously rendered as any of the following, The original name was even longer, Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia. This translates, A truly golden little book, no less beneficial than entertaining, of a republics best state and of the new island Utopia. Utopia is derived from the Greek prefix ou-, meaning not, in early modern English, Utopia was spelled Utopie, which is today rendered Utopy in some editions. A common misunderstanding has that Utopia is derived from eu-, good, in English, Utopia is pronounced exactly as Eutopia. This is something that More himself addresses in an addendum to his book Wherfore not Utopie, but rather rightely my name is Eutopie, More chose these letters, which are communications between actual people, to further the plausibility of his fictional land. In the same spirit, these also include a specimen of the Utopian alphabet. The letters also explain the lack of travel to Utopia, during the first mention of the land. The first book tells of the traveller Raphael Hythlodaeus, to whom More is introduced in Antwerp, and it explores the subject of how best to counsel a prince. The first discussions with Raphael allow him to some of the modern ills affecting Europe such as the tendency of kings to start wars. He also criticises the use of execution to punish theft, saying thieves might as well murder whom they rob, to remove witnesses, if the punishment is going to be the same. More tries to convince Raphael that he could find a job in a royal court, advising monarchs. Raphael sees himself in the tradition of Plato, he knows that for good governance, Utopia is placed in the New World and More links Raphaels travels in with Amerigo Vespuccis real life voyages of discovery. He suggests that Raphael is one of the 24 men Vespucci, in his Four Voyages of 1507, says he left for six months at Cabo Frio, Raphael then travels further and finds the island of Utopia, where he spends five years observing the customs of the natives. According to More, the island of Utopia is The island was originally a peninsula, each city is divided into four equal parts. The capital city, Amaurot, is located directly in the middle of the crescent island, each city has 6000 households, consisting of between 10 and 16 adults
6.
Latin
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Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
7.
Society
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In the social sciences, a larger society often evinces stratification or dominance patterns in subgroups. A society can also consist of like-minded people governed by their own norms and values within a dominant and this is sometimes referred to as a subculture, a term used extensively within criminology. The term society came from the Latin word societas, which in turn was derived from the noun used to describe a bond or interaction between parties that are friendly, or at least civil. Without an article, the term can refer to the entirety of humanity, Society, in general, addresses the fact that an individual has rather limited means as an autonomous unit. Cultural relativism as an approach or ethic has largely replaced notions of primitive, better/worse. Societies may also be structured politically, in order of increasing size and complexity, there are bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and state societies. These structures may have varying degrees of power, depending on the cultural, geographical. Thus, an isolated society with the same level of technology. A society that is unable to offer a response to other societies it competes with will usually be subsumed into the culture of the competing society. Sociologist Peter L. Berger defines society as. a human product, and nothing but a human product, according to him, society was created by humans but this creation turns back and creates or molds humans every day. This is similar to the earlier developed by anthropologists Morton H. This system of classification contains four categories, Hunter-gatherer bands, tribal societies in which there are some limited instances of social rank and prestige. Civilizations, with complex social hierarchies and organized, institutional governments, in addition to this there are, Humanity, mankind, upon which rest all the elements of society, including societys beliefs. Virtual society, a society based on identity, which is evolving in the information age. Over time, some cultures have progressed toward more complex forms of organization and this cultural evolution has a profound effect on patterns of community. Hunter-gatherer tribes settled around seasonal food stocks to become agrarian villages, villages grew to become towns and cities. Cities turned into city-states and nation-states, many societies distribute largess at the behest of some individual or some larger group of people. This type of generosity can be seen in all cultures, typically
8.
Classical antiquity
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It is the period in which Greek and Roman society flourished and wielded great influence throughout Europe, North Africa and Southwestern Asia. Conventionally, it is taken to begin with the earliest-recorded Epic Greek poetry of Homer, and continues through the emergence of Christianity and it ends with the dissolution of classical culture at the close of Late Antiquity, blending into the Early Middle Ages. Such a wide sampling of history and territory covers many disparate cultures, Classical antiquity may refer also to an idealised vision among later people of what was, in Edgar Allan Poes words, the glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome. The culture of the ancient Greeks, together with influences from the ancient Near East, was the basis of art, philosophy, society. The earliest period of classical antiquity takes place before the background of gradual re-appearance of historical sources following the Bronze Age collapse, the 8th and 7th centuries BC are still largely proto-historical, with the earliest Greek alphabetic inscriptions appearing in the first half of the 8th century. Homer is usually assumed to have lived in the 8th or 7th century BC, in the same period falls the traditional date for the establishment of the Ancient Olympic Games, in 776 BC. The Phoenicians originally expanded from Canaan ports, by the 8th century dominating trade in the Mediterranean, carthage was founded in 814 BC, and the Carthaginians by 700 BC had firmly established strongholds in Sicily, Italy and Sardinia, which created conflicts of interest with Etruria. The Etruscans had established control in the region by the late 7th century BC, forming the aristocratic. According to legend, Rome was founded on April 21,753 BC by twin descendants of the Trojan prince Aeneas, Romulus and Remus. As the city was bereft of women, legend says that the Latins invited the Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, leading to the integration of the Latins and the Sabines. Archaeological evidence indeed shows first traces of settlement at the Roman Forum in the mid-8th century BC, the seventh and final king of Rome was Tarquinius Superbus. As the son of Tarquinius Priscus and the son-in-law of Servius Tullius, Superbus was of Etruscan birth and it was during his reign that the Etruscans reached their apex of power. Superbus removed and destroyed all the Sabine shrines and altars from the Tarpeian Rock, the people came to object to his rule when he failed to recognize the rape of Lucretia, a patrician Roman, at the hands of his own son. Lucretias kinsman, Lucius Junius Brutus, summoned the Senate and had Superbus, after Superbus expulsion, the Senate voted to never again allow the rule of a king and reformed Rome into a republican government in 509 BC. In fact the Latin word Rex meaning King became a dirty and hated throughout the Republic. In 510, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow the tyrant Hippias, cleomenes I, king of Sparta, put in place a pro-Spartan oligarchy conducted by Isagoras. Greece entered the 4th century under Spartan hegemony, but by 395 BC the Spartan rulers removed Lysander from office, and Sparta lost her naval supremacy. Athens, Argos, Thebes and Corinth, the two of which were formerly Spartan allies, challenged Spartan dominance in the Corinthian War, which ended inconclusively in 387 BC
9.
Plato
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Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. He is widely considered the most pivotal figure in the development of philosophy, unlike nearly all of his philosophical contemporaries, Platos entire work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years. Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his most famous student, Aristotle, Plato laid the foundations of Western philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead once noted, the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. In addition to being a figure for Western science, philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche, amongst other scholars, called Christianity, Platonism for the people, Plato was the innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms in philosophy, which originate with him. He was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word “philosopher” should be applied, few other authors in the history of Western philosophy approximate him in depth and range, perhaps only Aristotle, Aquinas and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank. Due to a lack of surviving accounts, little is known about Platos early life, the philosopher came from one of the wealthiest and most politically active families in Athens. Ancient sources describe him as a bright though modest boy who excelled in his studies, the exact time and place of Platos birth are unknown, but it is certain that he belonged to an aristocratic and influential family. Based on ancient sources, most modern scholars believe that he was born in Athens or Aegina between 429 and 423 BCE. According to a tradition, reported by Diogenes Laertius, Ariston traced his descent from the king of Athens, Codrus. Platos mother was Perictione, whose family boasted of a relationship with the famous Athenian lawmaker, besides Plato himself, Ariston and Perictione had three other children, these were two sons, Adeimantus and Glaucon, and a daughter Potone, the mother of Speusippus. The brothers Adeimantus and Glaucon are mentioned in the Republic as sons of Ariston, and presumably brothers of Plato, but in a scenario in the Memorabilia, Xenophon confused the issue by presenting a Glaucon much younger than Plato. Then, at twenty-eight, Hermodorus says, went to Euclides in Megara, as Debra Nails argues, The text itself gives no reason to infer that Plato left immediately for Megara and implies the very opposite. Thus, Nails dates Platos birth to 424/423, another legend related that, when Plato was an infant, bees settled on his lips while he was sleeping, an augury of the sweetness of style in which he would discourse about philosophy. Ariston appears to have died in Platos childhood, although the dating of his death is difficult. Perictione then married Pyrilampes, her mothers brother, who had served many times as an ambassador to the Persian court and was a friend of Pericles, Pyrilampes had a son from a previous marriage, Demus, who was famous for his beauty. Perictione gave birth to Pyrilampes second son, Antiphon, the half-brother of Plato and these and other references suggest a considerable amount of family pride and enable us to reconstruct Platos family tree
10.
Republic (Plato)
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The Republic is a Socratic dialogue, written by Plato around 380 BCE, concerning justice, the order and character of the just city-state and the just man. It is Platos best-known work, and has proven to be one of the worlds most influential works of philosophy and political theory, both intellectually and historically. In the books dialogue, Socrates discusses the meaning of justice and whether or not the just man is happier than the unjust man with various Athenians and they consider the natures of existing regimes and then propose a series of different, hypothetical cities in comparison. This culminates in the discussion of Kallipolis, a hypothetical city-state ruled by a philosopher king and they also discuss the theory of forms, the immortality of the soul, and the role of the philosopher and that of poetry in society. The dialogues may have taken place during the Peloponnesian War, while visiting the Piraeus with Glaucon, Polemarchus asks Socrates to join him for a celebration. Cephalus, Polemarchus, and Thrasymachus are then asked their definitions of justice by Socrates. Cephalus defines justice as giving what is owed, Polemarchus says justice is the art which gives good to friends and evil to enemies. Thrasymachus proclaims justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger, Socrates overturns their definitions and says that it is your advantage to be just and disadvantage to be unjust. The first book ends in aporia concerning its essence, Socrates believes he has answered Thrasymachus and is done with the discussion of justice. Socratess young companions, Glaucon and Adeimantus, continue the argument of Thrasymachus for the sake of furthering the discussion. Glaucon would like Socrates to prove that justice is not only desirable, but that it belongs to the highest class of desirable things, Socrates suggests that they look for justice in a city rather than in an individual man. After attributing the origin of society to the not being self-sufficient and having many needs which he cannot supply himself. Socrates first describes the state but Glaucon asks him to describe a city of pigs. He then goes on to describe the city, which he calls a fevered state. This requires a class to defend and attack on its account. This begins a discussion concerning the type of education that ought to be given to these guardians in their early years and they conclude that stories that ascribe evil to the gods are untrue and should not be taught. Socrates and his companions Adeimantus and Glaucon conclude their discussion concerning education, Socrates breaks the educational system into two. They suggest that guardians should be educated in these four virtues, wisdom, courage and they also suggest that the second part of the guardians education should be in gymnastics
11.
Samuel Johnson
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Johnson was a devout Anglican and committed Tory, and is described by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history. He is also the subject of perhaps the most famous biography in English literature, born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, Johnson attended Pembroke College, Oxford for just over a year, before his lack of funds forced him to leave. After working as a teacher, he moved to London, where he began to write for The Gentlemans Magazine and his early works include the biography Life of Mr Richard Savage, the poems London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, and the play Irene. After nine years of work, Johnsons A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755 and it had a far-reaching effect on Modern English and has been described as one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship. This work brought Johnson popularity and success, until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary 150 years later, Johnsons was viewed as the pre-eminent British dictionary. His later works included essays, an annotated edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare. In 1763, he befriended James Boswell, with whom he travelled to Scotland. Towards the end of his life, he produced the massive and influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Johnson was a tall and robust man. His odd gestures and tics were disconcerting to some on first meeting him, after a series of illnesses, he died on the evening of 13 December 1784, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Born on 18 September 1709, to Michael Johnson, a bookseller and he did not cry and, with doubts surrounding the newborns health, his aunt exclaimed that she would not have picked such a poor creature up in the street. Since it was feared that the baby die, the vicar of St Marys was summoned to perform a baptism. Two godfathers were chosen, Samuel Swynfen, a physician and graduate of Pembroke College, Oxford, and Richard Wakefield, a lawyer, coroner, Johnsons health improved and he was put to wet-nurse with Joan Marklew. He soon contracted scrofula, known at time as the Kings Evil because it was thought royalty could cure it. Sir John Floyer, former physician to King Charles II, recommended that the young Johnson should receive the royal touch, however, the ritual was ineffective, and an operation was performed that left him with permanent scars across his face and body. Johnson demonstrated signs of intelligence as a child, and his parents, to his later disgust. His education began at the age of three, and was provided by his mother, who had him memorise and recite passages from the Book of Common Prayer. When Samuel turned four, he was sent to a nearby school, a year later, Johnson went to Lichfield Grammar School, where he excelled in Latin. During this time, Johnson started to exhibit the tics that would influence how people viewed him in his years
12.
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
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The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, originally titled The Prince of Abissinia, A Tale, though often abbreviated to Rasselas, is an apologue about happiness by Samuel Johnson. The books original working title was The Choice of Life and he wrote the piece in only one week to help pay the costs of his mothers funeral, intending to complete it on 22 January 1759. The book was first published in April 1759 in England, Johnson is believed to have received a total of £75 for the copyright. The first American edition followed in 1768, Johnson was influenced by the vogue for exotic locations. He had translated A Voyage to Abyssinia by Jerónimo Lobo in 1735, ten years prior to writing Rasselas he published The Vanity of Human Wishes in which he describes the inevitable defeat of worldly ambition. Early readers considered Rasselas to be a work of philosophical and practical importance, Johnson was a staunch opponent of slavery, revered by abolitionists, and Rasselas became a name adopted by emancipated slaves. In contrast the question Rasselas confronts most directly is whether or not humanity is capable of attaining happiness. The plot is simple in the extreme, Rasselas, son of the King of Abyssinia, is shut up in a beautiful valley, till the order of succession should call him to the throne. He grows weary of the entertainments of the place, and after much brooding escapes with his sister Nekayah, her attendant Pekuah. Local color is almost nonexistent and the story is primarily episodic. Irvin Ehrenpreis sees an aged Johnson reflecting on lost youth in the character of Rasselas who is exiled from Happy Valley, Rasselas has also been viewed as a reflection of Johnsons melancholia projected on to the wider world, particularly at the time of his mothers death. Hester Piozzi saw in part Johnson in the character of Imlac who is rejected in his courtship by a social superior. Rasselas is seen to express hostility to the imperialism of his day. Johnson himself was regarded as a prophet who opposed imperialism, who described the Anglo-French war for America as a dispute between two thieves over the proceeds of a robbery. Other scholars have argued that Johnson was influenced, at least in part, by texts, including works by Herodotus. A radio adaptation of Rasselas by Jonathan Holloway was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on 24 May 2015, with Ashley Zhangazha as Rasselas, Jeff Rawle as Samuel Johnson, cynthia Erivo made her BBC radio drama debut as Princess Nekayah. The drama was recorded at Dr Johnsons House,17 Gough Square, sound design was by David Chilton, and the drama was introduced by Celine Luppo McDaid, Curator, Dr Johnsons House. It was produced and directed by Amber Barnfather, the Second Part of the History of Rasselas by Elizabeth Pope Whately, wife of Richard Whately
13.
Samuel Butler (novelist)
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Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic English author of a variety of works. Two of his most famous works are the Utopian satire Erewhon and he is also known for examining Christian orthodoxy, substantive studies of evolutionary thought, studies of Italian art, and works of literary history and criticism. Butler made prose translations of the Iliad and Odyssey that remain in use to this day and it has been suggested that this family dynamic had some impact on Samuel, insofar as it created the oppressive home environment which formed his approach to the world. Thomas Butler, states one critic, to make up for having been a servile son, in any event, Samuel Butlers relationship with his parents, and especially with his father, was largely antagonistic. His education began at home and included frequent beatings, as was not uncommon at the time, Samuel, however, found his parents particularly brutal and stupid by nature, and their relationship to him never progressed beyond the adversarial. He later recorded of his father that, He never liked me, nor I him, from my earliest recollections I can call to no time when I did not fear him. I have never passed a day without thinking of him many times over as the man who was sure to be against me, under his parents influence, he was set on course to follow his father into the priesthood. He was sent to Shrewsbury at the age of twelve, then in 1854 he went up to St Johns College, Cambridge, where he obtained a first in Classics in 1858. This experience would serve as inspiration for his work The Fair Haven. Correspondence with his father about the failed to set his mind at peace. As a result, he emigrated in September 1859, on the ship Roman Emperor to New Zealand, Butler went there like many early British settlers of privileged origins, to put as much distance as possible between himself and his family. Erewhon revealed Butlers long interest in Darwins theories of biological evolution, in 1863, four years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species, the editor of a New Zealand newspaper, The Press, published a letter captioned Darwin among the Machines. Butler also spent much time criticising Darwin, partly because Butler believed that Darwin had not sufficiently acknowledged his grandfather Erasmus Darwins contribution to the origins of his theory. Butler returned to England in 1864, settling in rooms in Cliffords Inn, in 1872, the Utopian novel Erewhon appeared anonymously, causing some speculation as to the identity of the author. When Butler revealed himself, Erewhon made him a figure, more because of this speculation than for its literary merits. In 1839 his grandfather Dr Butler had left Samuel property he owned at Whitehall in Shrewsbury on the condition that he survived his own father and his aunt, Dr Butlers daughter Harriet Lloyd. While at Cambridge in 1857 he sold the Whitehall mansion and six acres to his cousin Thomas Bucknall Lloyd and his aunt died in 1880 and his fathers death in 1886 resolved his financial problems for the last sixteen years of his own life. Butler indulged himself, holidaying in Italy every summer and producing, while he was there, his works on the Italian landscape and his close interest in the art of the Sacri Monti is reflected in Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino and Ex Voto
14.
Erewhon
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Erewhon, or, Over the Range /ɛ. rɛ. hwɒn/ is a novel by Samuel Butler which was first published anonymously in 1872. The title is also the name of a country, supposedly discovered by the protagonist, in the novel, it is not revealed where Erewhon is, but it is clear that it is a fictional country. Butler meant the title to be read as nowhere backwards even though the letters h and w are transposed, the book is a satire on Victorian society. The greater part of the consists of a description of Erewhon. The nature of this nation is intended to be ambiguous, at first glance, Erewhon appears to be a Utopia, yet it soon becomes clear that this is far from the case. Yet for all the failings of Erewhon, it is clearly not a dystopia. It can also be compared to the William Morris novel, News from Nowhere, Erewhon satirises various aspects of Victorian society, including criminal punishment, religion and anthropocentrism. For example, according to Erewhonian law, offenders are treated as if they were ill, another feature of Erewhon is the absence of machines, this is due to the widely shared perception by the Erewhonians that they are potentially dangerous. This last aspect of Erewhon reveals the influence of Charles Darwins evolution theory, Butler was the first to write about the possibility that machines might develop consciousness by Darwinian Selection. Nothing could be further from my intention, and few things would be distasteful to me than any attempt to laugh at Mr. Darwin. Higgs—The narrator who informs the reader of the nature of Erewhonian society, chowbok —Higgs guide into the mountains, he is a native who greatly fears the Erewhonians. Yram—The daughter of Higgs jailer who takes care of him when he first enters Erewhon and her name is Mary spelled backwards. Senoj Nosnibor—Higgs host after he is released from prison, he hopes that Higgs will marry his elder daughter and his name is Robinson Jones backwards. Zulora—Senoj Nosnibors elder daughter—Higgs finds her unpleasant, but her father hopes Higgs will marry her, arowhena—Senoj Nosnibors younger daughter, she falls in love with Higgs and runs away with him. Mahaina—A woman who claims to suffer from alcoholism but is believed to have a weak temperament, ydgrun—The incomprehensible goddess of the Erewhonians. Her name is an anagram of Grundy, after its first release, this book sold far better than any of Butlers other works, perhaps because the British public assumed that the anonymous author was some better-known figure. In a 1945 broadcast, George Orwell praised the book and said that when Butler wrote Erewhon it needed imagination of a high order to see that machinery could be dangerous as well as useful. He recommended the novel, though not its sequel, Erewhon Revisited, the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze used ideas from Butlers book at various points in the development of his philosophy of difference
15.
Police state
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Police state is a term denoting a government that exercises power arbitrarily through the power of the police force. Political control may be exerted by means of a police force that operates outside the boundaries normally imposed by a constitutional state. Robert von Mohl, who first introduced the rule of law to German jurisprudence, the Oxford English Dictionary traces the phrase police state back to 1851, when it was used in reference to the use of a national police force to maintain order, in Austria. The German term Polizeistaat came into English usage in the 1930s with reference to governments that had begun to emerge in Europe. Because there are different political perspectives as to what an appropriate balance is between individual freedom and national security, there are no standards defining a police state. This concept can be viewed as a balance or scale, along this spectrum, any law that has the effect of removing liberty is seen as moving towards a police state, while any law that limits government oversight is seen as moving towards a free state. An electronic police state is one in which the government aggressively uses electronic technologies to record, organize, search, the Oprichnina established by Ivan IV within the Tsardom of Russia in 1565 functioned as a police state, featuring persecutions and autocratic rule. Nazi Germany emerged from a democratic process, yet gradually exerted more and more repressive controls over its people in the lead-up to World War II. In addition to the SS and the Gestapo, the Nazi police state used the judiciary to assert control over the population from the 1930s until the end of the war in 1945, the Republic of Cuba under president Fulgencio Batista was an authoritarian police state during his rule. Police influence continued following his overthrow during the Cuban Revolution in 1959 with the rise to power of Fidel Castro, in response to government proposals to enact new security measures to curb protests, government of AK Party has been accused of turning Turkey into a police state. Fictional police states have featured in a number of media ranging from novels to films to video games, george Orwells 1984 has been described as the definitive fictional treatment of a police state, which has also influenced contemporary usage of the term. Amnesty International,2005 — annual report on human rights violations Council for Secular Humanism article describing attributes of police states David Mery Suspicious behaviour on the tube. Whitehead to Speak to Senior Statesmen of Virginia on the Emerging American Police State and What 2014 Holds in Store for Our Freedoms
16.
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
17.
Candide
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Candide, ou lOptimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been translated, with English versions titled Candide, or, All for the Best, Candide, or, The Optimist. It begins with a man, Candide, who is living a sheltered life in an Edenic paradise. The work describes the abrupt cessation of this lifestyle, followed by Candides slow, Candide is characterised by its sarcastic tone as well as by its erratic, fantastical and fast-moving plot. Still, the events discussed are often based on historical happenings, such as the Seven Years War, as philosophers of Voltaires day contended with the problem of evil, so too does Candide in this short novel, albeit more directly and humorously. Voltaire ridicules religion, theologians, governments, armies, philosophies, as expected by Voltaire, Candide has enjoyed both great success and great scandal. Immediately after its publication, the book was widely banned because it contained religious blasphemy, political sedition. However, with its wit and insightful portrayal of the human condition. Today, Candide is recognized as Voltaires magnum opus and is listed as part of the Western canon. The British poet and literary critic Martin Seymour-Smith listed Candide as one of the 100 most influential books ever written, both of the latter catastrophes are frequently referred to in Candide and are cited by scholars as reasons for its composition. The 1755 Lisbon earthquake, tsunami, and resulting fires of All Saints Day, had a influence on theologians of the day and on Voltaire. The earthquake had a large effect on the contemporary doctrine of optimism. Optimism is founded on the theodicy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz that says all is for the best because God is a benevolent deity and this concept is often put into the form, all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Philosophers had trouble fitting the horrors of this earthquake into the optimist world view, Voltaire actively rejected Leibnizian optimism after the natural disaster, convinced that if this were the best possible world, it should surely be better than it is. In both Candide and Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne, Voltaire attacks this optimist belief, immediately after the earthquake, unreliable rumours circulated around Europe, sometimes overestimating the severity of the event. Ira Wade, an expert on Voltaire and Candide, has analysed which sources Voltaire might have referenced in learning of the event. Wade speculates that Voltaires primary source for information on the Lisbon earthquake was the 1755 work Relation historique du Tremblement de Terre survenu à Lisbonne by Ange Goudar. The protagonist of this novel, who was supposed to embody stereotypically German characteristics, is similar to the protagonist of Candide
18.
We (novel)
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We is a dystopian novel by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, completed in 1921. The novel was first published in 1924 by E. P. Dutton in New York in an English translation by Gregory Zilboorg, the novel describes a world of harmony and conformity within a united totalitarian state. D-503, an engineer, lives in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass. The structure of the state is Panopticon-like, and life is scientifically managed F. W. Taylor-style, people march in step with each other and are uniformed. There is no way of referring to people except by their given numbers, the society is run strictly by logic or reason as the primary justification for the laws or the construct of the society. The individuals behaviour is based on logic by way of formulas, One thousand years after the One States conquest of the entire world, the spaceship Integral is being built in order to invade and conquer extraterrestrial planets. Meanwhile, the chief engineer, D-503, begins a journal that he intends to be carried upon the completed spaceship. Like all other citizens of One State, D-503 lives in an apartment building and is carefully watched by the secret police. D-503s lover, O-90, has been assigned by One State to visit him on certain nights and she is considered too short to bear children and is deeply grieved by her state in life. O-90s other lover and D-503s best friend is R-13, a State poet who reads his verse at public executions, while on an assigned walk with O-90, D-503 meets a woman named I-330. I-330 smokes cigarettes, drinks alcohol, and shamelessly flirts with D-503 instead of applying for an impersonal sex visit, both repelled and fascinated, D-503 struggles to overcome his attraction to I-330. I-330 invites him to visit the Ancient House, notable for being the only building in One State. Objects of aesthetic and historical importance dug up from around the city are stored there, There, I-330 offers him the services of a corrupt doctor to explain his absence from work. Leaving in horror, D-503 vows to denounce her to the Bureau of Guardians and he begins to have dreams, which disturbs him, as dreams are thought to be a symptom of mental illness. Slowly, I-330 reveals to D-503 that she is involved with the Mephi and she takes him through secret tunnels inside the Ancient House to the world outside the Green Wall, which surrounds the city-state. There, D-503 meets the inhabitants of the world, humans whose bodies are covered with animal fur. The aims of the Mephi are to destroy the Green Wall, despite the recent rift between them, O-90 pleads with D-503 to impregnate her illegally. After O-90 insists that she will obey the law by turning over their child to be raised by the One State, however, as her pregnancy progresses, O-90 realizes that she cannot bear to be parted from her baby under any circumstances
19.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
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Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin was a Russian author of science fiction and political satire. He is most famous for his 1921 novel We, a set in a dystopian future police state. Despite having been a prominent Old Bolshevik, Zamyatin was deeply disturbed by the policies pursued by the CPSU following the October Revolution, in 1921, We became the first work banned by the Soviet censorship board. Ultimately, Zamyatin arranged for We to be smuggled to the West for publication, the subsequent outrage this sparked within the Party and the Union of Soviet Writers led directly to Zamyatins successful request for exile from his homeland. Due to his use of literature to criticize Soviet society, Zamyatin has been referred to as one of the first Soviet dissidents, Zamyatin was born in Lebedyan, Tambov Governorate,300 km south of Moscow. His father was a Russian Orthodox priest and schoolmaster, and his mother a musician. In a 1922 essay, Zamyatin recalled, You will see a lonely child, without companions of his own age, on his stomach, over a book, or under the piano. He may have had synesthesia since he gave letters and sounds qualities, for instance, he saw the letter Л as having pale, cold and light blue qualities. He studied naval engineering in Saint Petersburg from 1902 until 1908 and he was arrested during the Russian Revolution of 1905 and sent into internal exile in Siberia. However, he escaped and returned to Saint Petersburg where he lived illegally before moving to the Grand Duchy of Finland in 1906 to finish his studies, after returning to Russia, he began to write fiction as a hobby. He was arrested and exiled a second time in 1911, and his Uyezdnoye in 1913, which satirized life in a small Russian town, brought him a degree of fame. The next year he was tried for maligning the Imperial Russian Military in his story Na Kulichkakh and he continued to contribute articles to various Marxist newspapers. After graduating as an engineer for the Imperial Russian Navy, Zamyatin worked professionally at home, in 1916 he was sent to the United Kingdom to supervise the construction of icebreakers at the shipyards in Walker and Wallsend while living in Newcastle upon Tyne. Zamyatin later recalled, In England, I built ships, looked at ruined castles, listened to the thud of bombs dropped by German zeppelins, I regret that I did not see the February Revolution, and know only the October Revolution. This is the same as never having been in love and waking up one morning already married for ten years or so, Zamyatins The Islanders, satirizing English life, and the similarly themed A Fisher of Men, were both published after his return to Russia in late 1917. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 he edited several journals, lectured on writing, and edited Russian translations of works by Jack London, O. Henry, H. G. Wells, Zamyatin originally supported the October Revolution, but opposed the increasing use of censorship which followed. His works became increasingly satirical and critical toward the CPSU, although he supported them before they came to power he slowly came to disagree more and more with their policies, particularly those regarding censorship of the arts. This attitude made his position increasingly difficult as the 1920s wore on, in 1923, Zamyatin arranged for the manuscript of his novel We to be smuggled to E. P
20.
George Orwell
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Eric Arthur Blair, better known by the pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of injustice, opposition to totalitarianism. Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction, and polemical journalism and he is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945, Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903, in Motihari, Bengal Presidency, in British India. His grandfather, Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was a clergyman, although the gentility passed down the generations, the prosperity did not, Eric Blair described his family as lower-upper-middle class. His father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service and his mother, Ida Mabel Blair, grew up in Moulmein, Burma, where her French father was involved in speculative ventures. Eric had two sisters, Marjorie, five years older, and Avril, five years younger, when Eric was one year old, his mother took him and his sister to England. His birthplace and ancestral house in Motihari has been declared a monument of historical importance. In 1904, Ida Blair settled with her children at Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, Eric was brought up in the company of his mother and sisters, and apart from a brief visit in mid-1907, they did not see the husband and father Richard Blair until 1912. His mothers diary from 1905 describes a lively round of social activity, before the First World War, the family moved to Shiplake, Oxfordshire where Eric became friendly with the Buddicom family, especially their daughter Jacintha. When they first met, he was standing on his head in a field, on being asked why, he said, You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are right way up. Jacintha and Eric read and wrote poetry, and dreamed of becoming famous writers and he said that he might write a book in the style of H. G. Wellss A Modern Utopia. During this period, he enjoyed shooting, fishing and birdwatching with Jacinthas brother and sister. At the age of five, Eric was sent as a day-boy to a convent school in Henley-on-Thames and it was a Roman Catholic convent run by French Ursuline nuns, who had been exiled from France after religious education was banned in 1903. His mother wanted him to have a school education, but his family could not afford the fees. Ida Blairs brother Charles Limouzin recommended St Cyprians School, Eastbourne, Limouzin, who was a proficient golfer, knew of the school and its headmaster through the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club, where he won several competitions in 1903 and 1904. The headmaster undertook to help Blair to win a scholarship, in September 1911 Eric arrived at St Cyprians. He boarded at the school for the five years, returning home only for school holidays
21.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
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Nineteen Eighty-Four, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel published in 1949 by English author George Orwell. The novel is set in Airstrip One, a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of war, omnipresent government surveillance. The superstate and its residents are dictated to by a political regime euphemistically named English Socialism, shortened to Ingsoc in Newspeak, the tyranny is ostensibly overseen by Big Brother, the Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality, but who may not even exist. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake and it is not interested in the good of others, it is interested solely in power. The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party, who works for the Ministry of Truth and his job is to rewrite past newspaper articles, so that the historical record always supports the party line. The instructions that the workers receive portray the corrections as fixing misquotations and never as what they really are, forgeries and falsifications. A large part of the Ministry also actively destroys all documents that have not been edited and do not contain the revisions, in this way, Smith is a diligent and skillful worker but secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother. The heroine of the novel, Julia, is based on Orwells second wife, as literary political fiction and dystopian science-fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic novel in content, plot and style. Many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Room 101, telescreen,2 +2 =5, and memory hole, have entered into common use since its publication in 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four popularised the adjective Orwellian, which describes official deception, secret surveillance, in 2005, the novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. It was awarded a place on lists of Modern Library 100 Best Novels, reaching number 13 on the editors list. In 2003, the novel was listed at number 8 on the BBCs survey The Big Read, on 4 December 1948, he sent the final manuscript to the publisher Secker and Warburg and Nineteen Eighty-Four was published on 8 June 1949. By 1989, it had translated into sixty-five languages, more than any other novel in English at the time. Warburg suggested changing the title to a more commercial one. In the novel 1985, Anthony Burgess suggests that Orwell, disillusioned by the onset of the Cold War, intended to call the book 1948. The introduction to the Penguin Books Modern Classics edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four reports that Orwell originally set the novel in 1980, the final title is also a permutation of 1948, the year of composition. The novel is in the domain in Canada, South Africa, Argentina, Australia. It will be in the domain in the United Kingdom and Brazil in 2021
22.
Propaganda
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Propaganda is information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view. Propaganda is often associated with material prepared by governments, but activist groups, in the 2010s, the term propaganda is associated with a manipulative approach, but propaganda historically was a neutral descriptive term. Propaganda is a modern Latin word, the form of propagare, meaning to spread or to propagate. Originally this word derived from a new body of the Catholic church created in 1622, called the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide. Its activity was aimed at propagating the Catholic faith in non-Catholic countries, from the 1790s, the term began being used also to refer to propaganda in secular activities. The term began taking a pejorative or negative connotation in the mid-19th century, primitive forms of propaganda have been a human activity as far back as reliable recorded evidence exists. The Behistun Inscription detailing the rise of Darius I to the Persian throne is viewed by most historians as an example of propaganda. During the era of the American Revolution, the American colonies had a network of newspapers and printers who specialized in the topic on behalf of the Patriots. During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic era, propaganda was widely used, abolitionists in Britain and the United States in the 19th century developed large, complex propaganda campaigns against slavery. The first large-scale and organised propagation of government propaganda was occasioned by the outbreak of war in 1914, after the defeat of Germany in the First World War, military officials such as Erich Ludendorff suggested that British propaganda had been instrumental in their defeat. Adolf Hitler came to echo this view, believing that it had been a cause of the collapse of morale. Later, the Nazis adapted many British propaganda techniques during their time in power, most propaganda in Germany was produced by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Joseph Goebbels was placed in charge of this ministry, the 1930s and 1940s, which saw the rise of totalitarian states and the Second World War, are arguably the Golden Age of Propaganda. Leni Riefenstahl, a filmmaker working in Nazi Germany, created one of the propaganda movies. US war films in the early 1940s in the United States were designed to create a patriotic mindset, the West and the Soviet Union both used propaganda extensively during the Cold War. Both sides used film, television, and radio programming to influence their own citizens, each other, george Orwells novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four are virtual textbooks on the use of propaganda. During the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro stressed the importance of propaganda, Propaganda was used extensively by Communist forces in the Vietnam War as means of controlling peoples opinions. During the Yugoslav wars, propaganda was used as a strategy by governments of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Croatia
23.
Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
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Big Brother is a fictional character and symbol in George Orwells novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is ostensibly the leader of Oceania, a state wherein the ruling Party wields total power for its own sake over the inhabitants. In the society that Orwell describes, every citizen is under constant surveillance by the authorities, the people are constantly reminded of this by the slogan Big Brother is watching you, a maxim which is ubiquitously on display. In modern culture the term Big Brother has entered the lexicon as a synonym for abuse of government power, particularly in respect to civil liberties, often specifically related to mass surveillance. The original posters showed J. M. Bennett himself, a old man offering guidance. According to Burgess, after Bennetts death, his son took over the company, additional speculation from Douglas Kellner of UCLA argued that Big Brother represents Joseph Stalin. Another theory is that the inspiration for Big Brother was Brendan Bracken, Orwell worked under Bracken on the BBCs Indian Service. Bracken was customarily referred to by MOI employees by his initials, Orwell also resented the wartime censorship and need to manipulate information which he felt came from the highest levels of the MOI and from Brackens office in particular. In the novel, it is never clear whether Big Brother is or had been a real person, or is a fictional personification of the Party, similar to Britannia. Big Brother is described as appearing on posters and telescreens as a man in his mid-40s. In Party propaganda, Big Brother is presented as one of the founders of the Party, at one point, Winston Smith, the protagonist of Orwells novel, tries to remember in what year he had first heard mention of Big Brother. He thought it must have been at time in the sixties. In the Party histories, of course, Big Brother figured as the leader, in the book The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, read by Winston Smith and purportedly written by Goldstein, Big Brother is referred to as infallible and all-powerful. No-one has ever seen him and there is a certainty that he will never die. He is simply the guise in which the Party chooses to exhibit itself to the world, since the emotions of love, fear and reverence are more focused on an individual. When Winston Smith is later arrested, OBrien repeats that Big Brother will never die, when Smith asks if Big Brother exists, OBrien describes him as the embodiment of the Party and says that he will exist as long as the Party exists. When Winston asks Does Big Brother exist the same way I do, OBrien replies You do not exist. A spontaneous ritual of devotion to Big Brother is illustrated at the end of the Two Minutes Hate, At this moment the group of people broke into a deep, slow
24.
Aldous Huxley
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Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer, novelist, philosopher, and prominent member of the Huxley family. He graduated from Balliol College at the University of Oxford with an honours in English literature. Early in his career Huxley edited the magazine Oxford Poetry and published short stories, mid career and later, he published travel writing, film stories, and scripts. He spent the part of his life in the U. S. living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. In 1962, a year before his death, he was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature, Huxley was a humanist, pacifist, and satirist. He later became interested in subjects such as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the pre-eminent intellectuals of his time and he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in seven different years. Huxley was born in Godalming, Surrey, England, in 1894 and he was the third son of the writer and schoolmaster Leonard Huxley, who edited Cornhill Magazine, and his first wife, Julia Arnold, who founded Priors Field School. Julia was the niece of poet and critic Matthew Arnold and the sister of Mrs. Humphrey Ward, Aldous was the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, the zoologist, agnostic, and controversialist. His brother Julian Huxley and half-brother Andrew Huxley also became outstanding biologists, Aldous had another brother, Noel Trevelyan Huxley, who committed suicide after a period of clinical depression. As a child, Huxleys nickname was Ogie, short for Ogre and he was described by his brother, Julian, as someone who frequently the strangeness of things. According to his cousin and contemporary, Gervas Huxley, he had an early interest in drawing, Huxleys education began in his fathers well-equipped botanical laboratory, after which he enrolled at Hillside School near Godalming. He was taught there by his own mother for years until she became terminally ill. After Hillside, he went on to Eton College and his mother died in 1908 when he was 14. In 1911 he contracted the eye disease which left practically blind for two to three years and this ended his early dreams of becoming a doctor. In October 1913, Huxley went up to Balliol College, Oxford, in January 1916, he volunteered to join the British Army in the Great War, but was rejected on health grounds, being half-blind in one eye. In 1916 he edited Oxford Poetry and in June of that year graduated BA with First Class honours and his brother Julian wrote, I believe his blindness was a blessing in disguise. For one thing, it put paid to his idea of taking up medicine as a career and his uniqueness lay in his universalism
25.
Brave New World
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Brave New World is a novel written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley, and published in 1932. Huxley answered this book with a reassessment in an essay, Brave New World Revisited, in 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Brave New Worlds title derives from Mirandas speech in William Shakespeares The Tempest, Act V, how many goodly creatures are there here. O brave new world, That has such people int. Huxley wrote Brave New World while living in Sanary-sur-Mer, by this time, Huxley had already established himself as a writer and social satirist. Brave New World was Huxleys fifth novel and first dystopian work, Huxley said that Brave New World was inspired by the utopian novels of H. G. Wells, including A Modern Utopia and Men Like Gods. Wells hopeful vision of the futures possibilities gave Huxley the idea to begin writing a parody of the novel, which became Brave New World. He wrote in a letter to Mrs. Arthur Goldsmith, an American acquaintance, that he had been having a little fun pulling the leg of H. G. Wells, but then he got caught up in the excitement of own ideas. Unlike the most popular optimist utopian novels of the time, Huxley sought to provide a vision of the future. Huxley referred to Brave New World as a utopia, somewhat influenced by Wells own The Sleeper Awakes. George Orwell believed that Brave New World must have been derived from the novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. However, in a 1962 letter, Huxley says that he wrote Brave New World long before he had heard of We, according to We translator Natasha Randall, Orwell believed that Huxley was lying. The scientific futurism in Brave New World is believed to be cribbed from Daedalus by J. B. S. Haldane, the Brave New World character Mustapha Mond, Resident World Controller of Western Europe, is named after Sir Alfred Mond. Huxley visited Monds technologically advanced plant near Billingham, north east England, shortly before writing the novel, Huxley used the setting and characters in his science fiction novel to express widely held opinions, particularly the fear of losing individual identity in the fast-paced world of the future. An early trip to the United States gave Brave New World much of its character, the novel opens in London in AF632. The society is illuminated by the activities of the central characters, Lenina Crowne and Bernard Marx. Lenina, a worker, is socially accepted and contented, but Bernard. He is shorter in stature than the average of his Alpha caste—a quality shared by the lower castes and his intelligence and his work with hypnopaedia allow him to understand, and disapprove of, the methods by which society is sustained. Courting disaster, he is vocal and arrogant about his differences, Bernard is mocked by other Alphas because of his stature, as well as for his individualistic tendencies, and is threatened with exile to Iceland because of his nonconformity
26.
Anthony Burgess
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John Anthony Burgess Wilson, FRSL – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English writer and composer. From relatively modest beginnings in a Catholic family in Manchester, he became one of the best known English literary figures of the latter half of the twentieth century. Although Burgess was predominantly a comic writer, his dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange remains his best known novel, in 1971 it was adapted into a highly controversial film by Stanley Kubrick, which Burgess said was chiefly responsible for the popularity of the book. Burgess produced numerous other novels, including the Enderby quartet, and Earthly Powers and he wrote librettos and screenplays, including for the 1977 TV mini-series Jesus of Nazareth. He worked as a critic for several publications, including The Observer and The Guardian. A versatile linguist, Burgess lectured in phonetics, and translated Cyrano de Bergerac, Oedipus Rex, Burgess also composed over 250 musical works, he sometimes claimed to consider himself as much a composer as an author, although he enjoyed considerably more success in writing. Burgess was born at 91 Carisbrook Street in Harpurhey, a suburb of Manchester, to Catholic parents, Joseph and he was known in childhood as Jack, Little Jack, and Johnny Eagle. At his confirmation, the name Anthony was added and he became John Anthony Burgess Wilson and he began using the pen name Anthony Burgess upon the publication of his 1956 novel Time for a Tiger. His mother Elizabeth died at the age of 30 at home on 19 November 1918, the causes listed on her death certificate were influenza, acute pneumonia, and cardiac failure. His sister Muriel had died four days earlier on 15 November from influenza, broncho-pneumonia, Burgess believed he was resented by his father, Joseph Wilson, for having survived, when his mother and sister did not. After the death of his mother, Burgess was raised by his aunt, Ann Bromley. During this time, Burgesss father worked as a bookkeeper for a market by day. After his father married the landlady of this pub, Margaret Dwyer, in 1922, by 1924 the couple had established a tobacconist and off-licence business with four properties. On 18 April 1938, Joseph Wilson died from cardiac failure, pleurisy, Burgess stepmother died of a heart attack in 1940. Burgess has said of his largely solitary childhood, I was either distractedly persecuted or ignored, ragged boys in gangs would pounce on the well-dressed like myself. He attended St. Edmunds Elementary School before moving on to Bishop Bilsborrow Memorial Elementary School and he later reflected, When I went to school I was able to read. At the Manchester elementary school I attended, most of the children could not read, a little apart, rather different from the rest. Good grades resulted in a place at Xaverian College, as a young child he did not care about music, until he heard on his home-built radio a quite incredible flute solo, which he characterised as sinuous, exotic, erotic, and became spellbound
27.
A Clockwork Orange (novel)
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A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian novel by Anthony Burgess published in 1962. The book is written in a Russian-influenced argot called Nadsat. According to Burgess it was a jeu desprit written in just three weeks, Alex is a 15-year-old living in near-future dystopian England who leads his gang on a night of opportunistic, random ultra-violence. Alexs friends are Dim, a slow-witted bruiser who is the muscle, Georgie, an ambitious second-in-command, and Pete. They assault a scholar walking home from the library, rob a store, leaving the owner and his wife bloodied and unconscious, beat up a beggar. Joyriding through the countryside in a car, they break into an isolated cottage and terrorise the young couple living there, beating the husband. Back at the Korova, Alex strikes Dim for his response to a womans singing of an operatic passage. At home in his parents flat, Alex plays classical music at top volume. Alex coyly feigns illness to his parents to stay out of school the next day, following an unexpected visit from P. R. Deltoid, his post-corrective adviser, Alex visits a record store, where he meets two pre-teen girls. He invites them back to the flat, where he drugs, the next morning, Alex finds his droogs in a mutinous mood, waiting downstairs in the torn-up and graffitied lobby. Georgie challenges Alex for leadership of the gang, demanding that they pull a man-sized job, Alex breaks in and knocks the woman unconscious, but when he opens the door to let the others in, Dim strikes him in payback for the earlier fight. The gang abandons Alex on the front step to be arrested by the police, while in their custody, Alex is convicted of murder and sentenced to 14 years in prison. Two years into his term, he has obtained a job in one of the prison chapels playing religious music on the stereo to accompany the Sunday religious services. The chaplain mistakes Alexs Bible studies for stirrings of faith, in reality, as an unintended consequence, the soundtrack to one of the films, Beethovens Ninth Symphony, renders Alex unable to enjoy his beloved classical music as before. Although the prison chaplain accuses the state of stripping Alex of free will, Alex returns to his parents flat, only to find that they are renting his room to a lodger. Now homeless, he wanders the streets and enters a public library, the old scholar whom Alex had assaulted in Part 1 finds him and beats him, with the help of several friends. Two policemen come to Alexs rescue, but turn out to be Dim and Billyboy and they take Alex outside of town, brutalise him, and abandon him there. Alex collapses at the door of a cottage, realising too late that it is the one he
28.
Margaret Atwood
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Margaret Eleanor Atwood, CC OOnt FRSC is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is a winner of the Arthur C, in 2001, she was inducted into Canadas Walk of Fame. She is also a founder of the Writers Trust of Canada, among innumerable contributions to Canadian literature, she was a founding trustee of the Griffin Poetry Prize. Atwood is also the inventor, and developer, of the LongPen and she is the Co-Founder and a Director of Syngrafii Inc. a company that she started in 2004 to develop, produce and distribute the LongPen technology. She holds various patents related to the LongPen technologies, while she is best known for her work as a novelist, she has also published fifteen books of poetry. Many of her poems have inspired by myths and fairy tales. Atwood has published stories in Tamarack Review, Alphabet, Harpers, CBC Anthology, Ms. Saturday Night. She has also published four collections of stories and three collections of short prose works. Born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Atwood was the second of three children of Margaret Dorothy, a dietitian and nutritionist from Woodville, Nova Scotia and Carl Edmund Atwood. Because of her father’s ongoing research in forest entomology, Atwood spent much of her childhood in the backwoods of northern Quebec and travelling back and she did not attend school full-time until she was eight years old. She became a reader of literature, Dell pocketbook mysteries, Grimms Fairy Tales, Canadian animal stories. She attended Leaside High School in Leaside, Toronto, and graduated in 1957, Atwood began writing plays and poems at the age of six. Atwood realized she wanted to write professionally when she was 16, in 1957, she began studying at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, where she published poems and articles in Acta Victoriana, the college literary journal. Her professors included Jay Macpherson and Northrop Frye and she graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and a minor in philosophy and French. In late 1961, after winning the E. J. Pratt Medal for her privately printed book of poems, Double Persephone, she began graduate studies at Harvards Radcliffe College with a Woodrow Wilson fellowship. She obtained a degree from Radcliffe in 1962 and pursued doctoral studies at Harvard University for two years, but did not finish her dissertation, The English Metaphysical Romance. F. A. Chair, and New York University, where she was Berg Professor of English, Atwood, who was surrounded by the intellectual dialogue of the female faculty members at Victoria College, often portrays female characters dominated by patriarchy in her novels. She also sheds light on womens oppression as a result from patriarchal ideology
29.
The Handmaid's Tale
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The Handmaids Tale is a work of speculative fiction by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. The novels title echoes the component parts of Geoffrey Chaucers The Canterbury Tales and it has been adapted for the cinema, radio, opera, and stage. The Handmaids Tale has never been out of print since its first publication in 1985, the Handmaids Tale is set in the Republic of Gilead, a theocratic military dictatorship formed within the borders of what was formerly the United States of America. They are quickly able to take away womens rights, largely attributed to financial records being stored electronically, in this society, human rights are severely limited and womens rights are even more curtailed, for example, women are forbidden to read. The story is told in the first person by a woman called Offred, Offred describes her life during her third assignment as a handmaid, in this case to Fred. Offred describes the structure of Gileads society, including the different classes of women. The Commander is an official in Gilead. The Commanders wife, Serena Joy, also has secret interactions with Offred, arranging for her secretly to have sex with Nick, the Commanders driver, in an effort to get Offred pregnant. In exchange for Offreds cooperation, Serena Joy gives her news of her daughter, after Offreds initial meeting with Nick, they begin to rendezvous more frequently. Offred discovers she enjoys sex with Nick, despite her indoctrination and she shares potentially dangerous information about her past with him. Through another handmaid, Ofglen, Offred learns of the Mayday resistance, shortly after Ofglens disappearance, the Commanders wife finds evidence of the relationship between Offred and the Commander. As the novel concludes, she is being taken away by the secret police, before she is put in the large black van, Nick tells her that the men are part of the Mayday resistance and that Offred must trust him. Offred does not know if Nick is a member of the Mayday resistance or a government agent posing as one and she enters the van with her future uncertain. The novel concludes with an epilogue that explains that the events of the novel occurred shortly after the beginning of what is called the Gilead Period. The epilogue is a transcript of the proceedings of the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies written in 2195. According to the keynote speaker Professor Pieixoto, he and colleague, Professor Knotly Wade. They transcribed the tapes, calling them collectively the handmaids tale, Offred is the protagonist and narrator. She became considered a woman when Gilead was established, because she had married a man who was divorced
30.
The Hunger Games
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The Hunger Games is a trilogy of young adult dystopian novels written by American novelist Suzanne Collins. The series is set in The Hunger Games universe, and follows young characters Katniss Everdeen, the novels in the trilogy are titled The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay. The novels have all developed into films, with the film adaptation of Mockingjay split into two parts. The first two books in the series were both New York Times best sellers, and Mockingjay topped all US bestseller lists upon its release. By the time the film adaptation of The Hunger Games was released in 2012, the Hunger Games universe is a dystopia set in Panem, a country consisting of the wealthy Capitol and 12 districts in varying states of poverty. Every year, children from the districts are selected to participate in an annual televised death match called The Hunger Games. The novels were all well received, in August 2012, the series ranked second, beaten only by the Harry Potter series in NPRs poll of the top 100 teen novels, which asked voters to choose their favorite young adult books. On August 17,2012, Amazon announced The Hunger Games trilogy as its top seller, as of 2014, the trilogy has sold more than 65 million copies in the U. S. alone. The Hunger Games trilogy has been sold into 56 territories in 51 languages to date, the Hunger Games trilogy takes place in an unspecified future time, in the dystopian, post-apocalyptic nation of Panem, located in North America. The country consists of a wealthy Capitol city, located in the Rocky Mountains, the Capitol is lavishly rich and technologically advanced, but the districts are in varying states of poverty. The trilogys narrator and protagonist Katniss Everdeen, lives in District 12, the poorest region of Panem, located in Appalachia, the Games are a televised event in which the participants, called tributes, are forced to fight to the death in a dangerous public arena. The winning tribute and his/her home district are then rewarded with food, supplies, the Hunger Games is the first book in the series and was released on September 14,2008. The Hunger Games follows 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, a girl from District 12 who volunteers for the 74th Hunger Games in place of her younger sister Primrose Everdeen, also participating from District 12 is Peeta Mellark, a boy who has developed a secret crush on Katniss. They are mentored by District 12s only living victor, Haymitch Abernathy, Peeta confesses his love for Katniss in a television interview prior to the Games, leading the Capitol to portray Katniss and Peeta as star-crossed lovers. This revelation surprises Katniss, who harbors feelings for Gale Hawthorne, her friend, Haymitch advises Katniss to play along and feign feelings for Peeta in order to gain wealthy sponsors who can gift them crucial supplies during the Games. In the arena, Katniss develops an alliance with Rue, a tribute from District 11 who reminds Katniss of her kid sister. Katniss devises a memorial for Rue by placing flowers over her body as an act of defiance toward the Capitol. More than halfway through The Games, the tributes are alerted to a rule change that allows both tributes from the same district to be declared victors if they are the final two standing
31.
Suzanne Collins
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Suzanne Collins is an American television writer and author, best known as the author of The New York Times best selling series The Underland Chronicles and The Hunger Games trilogy. She is the youngest of four children, who include Kathryn, Andrew, as the daughter of a military officer, she and her family were constantly moving. She spent her childhood in the eastern United States, Collins graduated from the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham in 1980 as a Theater Arts major. She completed her bachelor of degree from Indiana University in 1985 with a double major in theater. In 1989, Collins earned her M. F. A. in dramatic writing from the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Collins career began in 1991 as a writer for childrens television shows. She worked on television shows for Nickelodeon, including Clarissa Explains It All, The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo, Little Bear. She was also the writer for Scholastic Entertainments Cliffords Puppy Days. She received a Writers Guild of America nomination in animation for co-writing the critically acclaimed Christmas special, Santa, after meeting childrens author James Proimos while working on the Kids WB show Generation O. Collins was inspired to write childrens books herself. During that time, Collins also wrote a picture book, When Charlie McButton Lost Power. In September 2008, Scholastic Press released The Hunger Games, the first book of a trilogy by Collins, the Hunger Games was partly inspired by the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. Another inspiration was her fathers career in the Air Force, which gave her insight to poverty, starvation, the trilogys second book, Catching Fire, was released in September 2009, and its third book, Mockingjay, was released on August 24,2010. Within 14 months,1.5 million copies of the first two Hunger Games books were printed in North America alone, the Hunger Games was on The New York Times Best Seller list for more than 60 weeks in a row. Lions Gate Entertainment acquired worldwide rights to a film adaptation of The Hunger Games. Collins adapted the novel for film herself, directed by Gary Ross, filming began in late spring 2011, with Jennifer Lawrence portraying main character Katniss Everdeen. Josh Hutcherson played Peeta Mellark and Liam Hemsworth played Gale Hawthorne, the subsequent two novels were adapted into films as well, with the latter book split into two cinematic installments, for a total of four films representing the three books. As a result of the popularity of The Hunger Games books, in March 2012, Amazon announced that Collins had become the best-selling Kindle author of all time. Collins resides in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, with her husband, Charles, originally a resident of Shawnee, Kansas and she and her family are practicing Christians
32.
The House of the Scorpion
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The House of the Scorpion is a science fiction young adult novel by Nancy Farmer. It is set in the future and mostly takes place in Opium, the main character Matteo, or Matt, Alacrán, is a young clone of a drug lord of the same name, usually called El Patrón. It is a story about the struggle to survive as a free individual and it won the U. S. National Book Award for Young Peoples Literature and was named a Newbery Honor Book and a Michael L. Printz Honor Book. In the speculative fiction field, it was a runner-up for the Locus Award in the adult category. The idea was originally from a story that Farmer wrote for an anthology. It is partially inspired by Farmer helping a Mexican man get to a city in Arizona after leaving Mexico, the book is not as long as Farmer would have liked because of its young adult audience, and she was unable to swear because of publishing rules. As The House of the Scorpion drew on so much of her childhood, the sequel, entitled The Lord of Opium, was finally published on September 3,2013. The story begins a few hours after the events of the first book. Opium consists of several drug-producing Farms, of which the Alacrán estate is the largest, the protagonist, Matt, is a clone of El Patrón. For the first six years of his life, he lives in a house on the edge of the poppy fields with Celia. When he is discovered by three children, Emilia and Steven and Maria, he smashes a window and jumps out of the house, unaware of the danger of jumping barefoot onto smashed glass, he has to be carried to El Patróns mansion and treated for his injuries. Matt is treated kindly until Mr. Alacrán, El Patróns great-grandson, recognizes him as a clone, resulting in a few months where he is locked in a room and treated like an animal. When he finds out, El Patrón is furious, but gives Matt clothes and his own room, Matt is also given a bodyguard, Tam Lin, a reformed terrorist who becomes a father figure to him. He lives in the house for the seven years and befriends María. Matt is kept in the dark about his identity, however, at Steven and Emilias wedding, El Patrón has a near-fatal heart attack. Matt and María attempt to flee in the chaos but are betrayed by the newlyweds. María is taken back to the convent where she studies, and Matt is taken to the hospital, where El Patrón at last confirms that Matt was created only as an organ donor to keep him alive. At that moment, Celia reveals that she has been giving Matt doses of arsenic, El Patróns resulting rage causes him to have a fatal heart attack
33.
Divergent (novel)
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Divergent is the debut novel of American novelist Veronica Roth, published by HarperCollins Childrens Books in 2011. The novel is the first of the Divergent trilogy, a series of young adult novels set in the Divergent Universe. Underlying the action and dystopian focused main plot is a romantic subplot between Tris and one of her instructors in the Dauntless faction, nicknamed Four. The novel has been compared to young adult books such as The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner because of its similar themes. Its major plot device, the division of society into personality types, is one used in science fiction works. Beyond its literary context, Roths open declaration of her religion as a Christian has brought commentary from Christian communities both endorsing and challenging the novel. Roth wrote Divergent while working on a Creative Writing degree at Northwestern University, Summit Entertainment purchased the media rights to the book in 2011 and subsequently produced a film adaptation titled Divergent which was released March 21,2014. The film, a success amongst audiences, generated $288,747,895 at the box office despite mixed reviews from critics. The novel is Veronica Roths debut novel and was published a little over a year after Roth graduated with a Bachelors degree from the Creative Writing program at Northwestern University, Roth wrote the novel during her senior year winter break and sold movie rights to the novel before she graduated. The novel is set in a post-apocalyptic Chicago, and I realized that it was Chicago already, and it was just because thats the city Ive known and loved the longest. Each year, all take a aptitude test that determines the faction for which they are best suited. After receiving the results, test takers choose a faction at the Choosing Ceremony and those who do not complete initiation into their new faction become factionless and are forced to live in poverty on the streets of the city. Sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior is born into an Abnegation family and she doesnt feel she belongs in Abnegation because she doesnt see herself as naturally selfless. Her aptitude test results are inconclusive and indicate aptitude for three factions – Abnegation, Erudite, and Dauntless, the test administrator warns her never to tell anyone that her results were inconclusive as this marks her as Divergent. Beatrice agonizes over Choosing Day, unsure about staying in Abnegation with her parents or moving to a different faction, on Choosing Day, Beatrice decides to leave Abnegation and join Dauntless. The Dauntless instructor, Four, explains that not all Dauntless initiates will be allowed to enter the faction, the initiates will have to go through a series of training and evaluation. Unique to this faction, only the top ten initiates will stay, while the rest will be dismissed and become factionless, by contrast, the other factions allow everyone who complete initiation to enter. During her initiation, Beatrice renames herself Tris and befriends transfer initiates Christina, Al, and Will but comes into conflict with fellow initiates Peter, Drew and she also befriends Dauntless-born initiates Uriah, Lynn, and Marlene
34.
Insurgent (novel)
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Insurgent is a 2012 science fiction young adult novel by American novelist Veronica Roth and the second book in the Divergent trilogy. As the sequel to the 2011 bestseller Divergent, it continues the story of Tris Prior, following the events of the previous novel, a war now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grows. While trying to save the people that she loves, Tris faces questions of grief, forgiveness, identity, loyalty, politics, Insurgent received mostly positive reviews from critics, with reviewers praising Roths writing. A film adaptation of the novel was released on March 20,2015, the factions are Abnegation for the selfless, Amity for the peaceful, Candor for the honest, Dauntless for the brave, and Erudite for the intelligent. Those who are tested with equal aptitude for more than one faction are deemed Divergent and those who fail the initiation of their particular faction are deemed factionless, a drain on society. After the events of Divergent, Beatrice Tris Prior, Tobias Four Eaton, Caleb Prior, Peter Hayes, Tris overhears Marcus discussing with the Amity leader Johanna Reyes that the Abnegation leaders died to protect a secret. There, they are greeted by Tobias mother, Evelyn Johnson-Eaton, Evelyn unsuccessfully persuades her son to sway Dauntless into joining forces with the factionless against Erudite. While Caleb and Susan decide to move back to the Abnegation sector, Tris and Tobias head to the Candor headquarters, where the other Dauntless members now reside. While Eric is executing some of the Divergents, Tris wounds him, giving time for the Dauntless members not breathing the gas, including Tobias, to capture him and their safety is revealed to be guaranteed by an Erudite renegade and Wills sister, Cara. Tris, Tobias, Lynn, and Shauna spy on the set upon by the Candor leader Jack Kang with Jeanine Matthewss representative. During the meeting, Lynn shoots and kills Max, while Shauna is rendered paraplegic by a nerve serum. To prevent more people dying, Tris offers herself over to Erudite and is placed in a cell by Peter and, to her shock, Caleb. There, Tris meets with Marcus, who tells her that Jeanine is withholding the information that Abnegation protected, Tris, Christina, Marcus head for Amity to request Johannas help, who, alongside several others including Susans brother, Robert, choose to assist them despite Amitys resistance. They are additionally assisted by Cara and another Erudite renegade, Fernando and this so-called Insurgents infiltrate the Erudite headquarters the following day, which sees the loss of Fernando, but they manage to access Jeanines laboratory. Inside, Tris faces simulations before confronting Jeanine, who is cornered by Tori Wu, despite trying to convince Tori to let her go, Tori kills Jeanine, then brands Tris a traitor. The information is a video narrated by a woman named Edith Prior, as the book ends, the room erupts into voices. The setting is a dystopian Chicago in the far future, where Lake Michigan has turned into a giant marsh, the Candor compound surrounds a ruined Merchandise Mart. The Amity live on farms, located outside a fence surrounds the city
35.
Veronica Roth
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Divergent was the recipient of the Goodreads Favorite Book of 2011 and the 2012 winner for Best Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction. Veronica Roth was born on August 19,1988 in New York City and her mother, Barbara Ross, is a painter who resides in Barrington. She is the youngest of three children and her parents divorced when she was five years old, and her mother has since remarried to Frank Ross, a financial consultant for landscaping companies. Her brother and sister live in the Chicago area and she is of German and Polish descent. Roth says of her father, “He had a job, now I have a good relationship with my stepdad. ”Her maternal grandparents were concentration camp survivors, whose religious convictions pushed her mother away from religion. Veronica Roth learned about Christianity by attending a Christian Bible study during her school years. Roth graduated from Barrington High School, after attending a year of college at Carleton College, she transferred to Northwestern University for its creative writing program. She married photographer Nelson Fitch in 2011 and they reside in the Chicago area. Veronica Roth is best known for her trilogy of novels, Divergent, Insurgent and she is the recipient of the Goodreads 2011 Choice Award and the Best of 2012 in the category Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction and also Best Goodreads Author in 2012. Roth wrote her first book, Divergent, while on break in her senior year at Northwestern University. Her first two novels sold over five million worldwide by fall 2013, just as the film based on the first novel was wrapping up. Roth sold the rights to The Divergent Series to Summit Entertainment. Filming of Divergent, the adaptation of the first book in the series, was started in April 2013, on March 21,2014, Lionsgate officially greenlit the film adaptation of Insurgent. The film was released on March 20,2015, on April 11,2014, Summit Entertainment announced that the third book, Allegiant, would be split into two films, part 1 and part 2. She wrote four short stories from Tobias Eatons point of view, the Transfer is the first of four short stories, which tells some of Tobiass life prior to Divergent. It was released on September 3,2013, the second story is titled The Initiate. The stories are sold separately as e-books and also bound together under the title Four, the last two short stories of Tobiass stories are titled The Son and The Traitor. The story collection was published in several forms in July 2014, the novella Free Four, Tobias Tells the Story chapter thirteen of Divergent in Tobiass point of view, and was released for Kindle in 2012 in the United States and in 2013 in the UK
36.
The Maze Runner
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The novel was published on October 7,2009 by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House, and was made into a 2014 major motion picture by 20th Century Fox. Thomas wakes up in an elevator that brings him to a place called the Glade. He has no memory of who he is or how he got there and he gradually discovers that the Glade is run by two boys, Alby, the leader, and Newt, the second-in-charge, who both maintain order by enforcing simple but effective rules. The elevator box surfaces from under the ground every week supplying new food, tools, every month a new boy with no memory of anything but his name, finds himself in that elevator box. The Glade is surrounded squarely by a wall made of concrete. Outside the wall is the Maze, a labyrinth of concrete walls covered in ivy that changes every day. The Maze houses strange, lethal creatures known as Grievers, Grievers are described as amorphous monsters of metal and flesh. The Gladers are trying to stay alive as well as solve the Maze by running through it as fast as they can while tracking movements of the walls and trying to find an exit to escape. One day after Thomas arrival, a girl named Teresa, is delivered through the elevator into the Glade with a note saying Shes the last one and it implies that there will be no more children sent into the Glade. The girl subsequently lapses into a coma, when Thomas comes to visit her, he recognizes her, but cant remember her name until he hears her voice telepathically in his mind telling him her name. Teresa wakes up and tells Thomas that they knew each other before they were sent into the Glade, Thomas proposes that the walls of the Maze arent random, but that their movements are actually a code, leading to the discovery that the Maze is spelling out words. Thomas also discovers that the Cliff that they all thought was just a cliff turns out to be where the Grievers leave the Maze or The Griever Hole as he, if they can come and go over the edge of the Cliff, then maybe so can the Gladers. This drives Thomas to think they need memories to get out, the changing is a process that begins after one gets the grief serum after getting stung, to cure the infection from the Grievers. They succeed, only to find out that they were test subjects in an experiment conducted by WICKED, Gally, one of the Gladers who always knew something was different about Thomas and hated him for it, appears at the laboratory to which the teenagers escape. He hadnt originally escaped with them, and he is acting as though he is being controlled and he moves to throw a knife at Thomas, but Chuck, the youngest Glader and Thomas friend, jumps in front of it. This was followed by a called the Flare. It is revealed that children are being tested to find a way to beat the Flare. The epilogue reveals that the group who rescued the Gladers may just be another variable in the experiment, Thomas is the last boy, but not the last person to enter the Glade
37.
James Dashner
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James Smith Dashner is an American writer of speculative fiction, primarily series for children or young adults, such as the Maze Runner series and the young adult fantasy series the 13th Reality. His 2008 novel The Journal of Curious Letters, first in the series, was one of the annual Borders Original Voices picks, james Dashner was born on November 26,1972 in Austell, Georgia. One of six children, he is a graduate of Duluth High School and Brigham Young University in Utah, Dashner and his wife Lynette have four children and are now living in Utah. Dashners books are written for young teens and his work is typically within the adventure, survival, and science-fiction genres
38.
Delirium (Lauren Oliver novel)
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The novel is the first part of a trilogy, followed by Pandemonium. The story is set in Portland, Maine, in the year 2091, civilization is concentrated in those cities which escaped the severe bombings of decades past. Travel between cities is highly restricted. Electric fences separate the city from the Wilds—unregulated territory which was mostly destroyed by bombs. The totalitarian government teaches that love is a disease, named amor deliria nervosa, a surgical cure for the deliria has been developed and is mandatory for citizens 18 years old and over. Lena has looked forward to the procedure for years, convinced as she is by the government that love is a disease that must be destroyed from mankinds system. However, mere months before her scheduled procedure, Lena falls in love with an Invalid named Alex and he was born in the Wilds outside the city, and has pretended to be cured in order to live undetected in the city and be in the resistance. He offers Lena the means of escape from the procedure that will destroy her ability to love, while trying to gain Lenas love, he finds out about her past life and family. When she mentions her mother and how she always kept a specific necklace with her. Alex then came and wanted to show Lena that her mother was still alive, so he brings her to the Crypts to show her that her mother was still alive. When they go and get to the room where her Mother is, they find it empty, ever since then, Lena has thought that her whole childhood was a lie and wanted to leave. The two of them would leave the city and live in the Wilds, joining the rebels who oppose the procedure, although Lena struggles with the thought of leaving her life behind, she ultimately decides to go just seven days before her procedure. Lauren Oliver says that the inspiration for Delirium came to her one day at the gym and she had recently read a Gabriel Garcia Márquez essay where he said that all books were about either love or death. Since her first book, Before I Fall was about death, at the gym she was watching a news report about a pandemic, and the two ideas combined in her head to form the central concept of the Delirium books. Delirium is the first installment of a trilogy, two books set between the first and second books, Hana and Annabel, were released on February 28 and December 26,2012 respectively. The second book, Pandemonium, was released on February 28,2012, the third and final book in the trilogy, Requiem, was released on March 5,2013. Another book, set between the second and third books of the trilogy, Raven, was also released March 5,2013, the intermediate books were compiled into one book, Delirium Stories subtitled Hana, Annabel, and Raven, released the same date. Alex, also between the first and second books, was released with the first edition of the book in the trilogy. Fox has ordered a pilot based on Delirium
39.
Video game
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A video game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device such as a TV screen or computer monitor. The word video in video game referred to a raster display device. Some theorists categorize video games as an art form, but this designation is controversial, the electronic systems used to play video games are known as platforms, examples of these are personal computers and video game consoles. These platforms range from large mainframe computers to small handheld computing devices, the input device used for games, the game controller, varies across platforms. Common controllers include gamepads, joysticks, mouse devices, keyboards, the touchscreens of mobile devices, and buttons, or even, with the Kinect sensor, a persons hands and body. Players typically view the game on a screen or television or computer monitor, or sometimes on virtual reality head-mounted display goggles. There are often game sound effects, music and, in the 2010s, some games in the 2000s include haptic, vibration-creating effects, force feedback peripherals and virtual reality headsets. In the 2010s, the game industry is of increasing commercial importance, with growth driven particularly by the emerging Asian markets and mobile games. As of 2015, video games generated sales of USD74 billion annually worldwide, early games used interactive electronic devices with various display formats. The earliest example is from 1947—a Cathode ray tube Amusement Device was filed for a patent on 25 January 1947, by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann, and issued on 14 December 1948, as U. S. Written by MIT students Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanens on a DEC PDP-1 computer in 1961, and the hit ping pong-style Pong, used the DEC PDP-1s vector display to have two spaceships battle each other. In 1971, Computer Space, created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, was the first commercially sold and it used a black-and-white television for its display, and the computer system was made of 74 series TTL chips. The game was featured in the 1973 science fiction film Soylent Green, Computer Space was followed in 1972 by the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home console. Modeled after a late 1960s prototype console developed by Ralph H. Baer called the Brown Box and these were followed by two versions of Ataris Pong, an arcade version in 1972 and a home version in 1975 that dramatically increased video game popularity. The commercial success of Pong led numerous other companies to develop Pong clones and their own systems, the game inspired arcade machines to become prevalent in mainstream locations such as shopping malls, traditional storefronts, restaurants, and convenience stores. The game also became the subject of articles and stories on television and in newspapers and magazines. Space Invaders was soon licensed for the Atari VCS, becoming the first killer app, the term platform refers to the specific combination of electronic components or computer hardware which, in conjunction with software, allows a video game to operate. The term system is commonly used
40.
Fallout (series)
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Fallout is a series of post-apocalyptic retrofuturistic role-playing video games. It was created by Interplay Entertainment, a forerunner for Fallout is Wasteland, a 1988 video game of which the Fallout series is regarded to be a spiritual successor. Although the game worlds are different, the story, inhabitants, locations. The first two titles in the series, Fallout and Fallout 2, were developed by Black Isle Studios, Micro Forté and 14 Degrees Easts 2001 Fallout Tactics, Brotherhood of Steel is a tactical role-playing game. A third entry in the series, Fallout 3, was released in 2008 by Bethesda Softworks. It was followed by Fallout, New Vegas in 2010, developed by Obsidian Entertainment, Fallout 4 was announced on June 3,2015, and was released on November 10,2015. Bethesda Softworks owns the rights to produce Fallout games, soon after acquiring the rights to the intellectual property, Bethesda licensed the rights to make a massively multiplayer online role-playing game version of Fallout to Interplay. The case was decided in favor of Bethesda, released in 1997, Fallout takes place in a post-apocalyptic Southern California, beginning in the year 2161. The protagonist, named the Vault Dweller, is tasked with recovering a water chip in the Wasteland to replace the one in their underground shelter home. Afterwards, the Vault Dweller must thwart the plans of a group of mutants, Fallout was originally intended to run under the GURPS role-playing game system. However, a disagreement with the creator of GURPS, Steve Jackson, fallouts atmosphere and artwork are reminiscent of post-WWII America and the nuclear paranoia that was widespread at that time. Fallout 2 takes place eighty years after Fallout, and centers around a descendant of the Vault Dweller, the player assumes the role of the Chosen One as they try to save their village, Arroyo, from severe famine and droughts. After saving the village, the Chosen One must save it again, this time from the Enclave, Fallout 3 was developed by Bethesda Game Studios and released on October 28,2008. The story picks up thirty years after the setting of Fallout 2 and 200 years after the war that devastated the games world. The player-character is a Vault-dweller in Vault 101 who is forced to flee when the Overseer tries to arrest them in response to their leaving the Vault. Once free, the player is dubbed the Lone Wanderer and ventures into the Wasteland in and around Washington, D. C. known as the Capital Wasteland, to find their father. It differs from games in the series by utilizing 3D graphics, a free-roam gaming world. It was developed simultaneously for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 using the Gamebryo engine and it received highly positive reviews, garnering 94/100, 92/100, and 93/100 averages scores on Metacritic for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game, respectively
41.
BioShock
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BioShock is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Boston and 2K Australia, and published by 2K Games. A mobile version was developed by IG Fun, the game is considered a spiritual successor to the System Shock series, on which many of Irrationals team including Levine had worked previously. The player guides the protagonist, Jack, after his airplane crashes in the ocean near the terminus that leads to the underwater city of Rapture. The player, as Jack, is able to defeat foes in a number of ways by using weapons, utilizing plasmids that give unique powers, and by turning Raptures own defenses against them. It received several Game of the Year awards from different media outlets, including from BAFTA, Game Informer, Spike TV, since its release a direct sequel has been released, BioShock 2 by 2K Marin, as well as a third game titled BioShock Infinite by Irrational Games. A remastered version of the game was released on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on September 13,2016, as part of BioShock, The Collection, along with BioShock 2 and Infinite. BioShock is set in 1960 in the city of Rapture. Rapture was planned and constructed in the 1940s by Objectivist business magnate Andrew Ryan who wanted to create a utopia for societys elite to flourish outside of government control, scientific progress greatly expanded, including the discovery of the genetic material ADAM created by sea slugs on the ocean floor. ADAM allows its users to alter their DNA to grant them powers like telekinesis and pyrokinesis. To protect Rapture, Ryan imposed a law that no contact with the world was allowed. Despite the apparent utopia, class distinctions grew, and former gangster, Fontaine used his plasmid-enhanced army to attack Ryan, but reportedly was killed in the battle. Ryan took the opportunity to seize his assets including the plasmid factories, in the months that followed, a second figure named Atlas rose to speak for the lower class, creating further strife. Ryan also created his own army of plasmid-enhanced soldiers, named Splicers, tension came to a head on New Years Eve of 1958, when Atlas ordered an all-out attack on Ryan. The battle left many dead, and the few sane survivors barricaded themselves away, what once was a beautiful utopia had fallen into a crumbling dystopia. In 1960, at the start of the game, player character Jack is a passenger on a plane that goes down in the Atlantic Ocean, as the only survivor, Jack makes his way to a nearby lighthouse that houses a bathysphere terminal that takes him to Rapture. Jack is contacted by Atlas via radio, and is guided to safety from the Splicers, Atlas requests Jacks help in stopping Ryan, directing him to a docked bathysphere where he claims Ryan has trapped his family. Enraged, Atlas directs Jack towards Ryans mansion through Ryans army of Splicers, ultimately, Jack enters Ryans personal office, where Ryan is patiently waiting for Jack by casually playing golf. With no place to run, Ryan is willing to accept death by his own free will, quoting one of his own principles and he asks Jack would you kindly kill him with the golf club, and Jack is compelled to do so
