Science Fiction Time Travel
on
Time Travel
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· Score: 1
my page on Time Travel, in fact and fiction, is at magicdragon.com click on "genres" or "if you like this, you'll like that" and then after 600k text page loads, click on "time travel" excerpt (text only) follows. TIME TRAVEL:
time machines, travel to the past or the future Some important early time travel subcategories, and their first published examples include:
1.Present to Future: "Anno 7603", by Norwegian playwright Johan Hermann Wessel (1781)
2.Present to Past: "Missing One's Coach", anonymous, Dublin Literary Magazine, 1838, sends narrator back a millennium
3.Future to Present: "An Uncommon Sort of Spectre", Edward Page Mitchell, 1879 (or should I count the Ghost of Christmas Future in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" (1843)?
4.Past to Present: "The Hour Glass", Robert Barr, [The Strand magazine, December 1898]
5.Time Machine: 7 years before H. G. Well's "The Time Machine", there was "The Clock That Went Backwards", by Edward Page Mitchell, [The New York Sun, 18 September 1881] Some other memorable time travel novels are:
1."Flatland" by E. A. Abbott [reprint New York: Penguin, 1986] not actually about time travel, but the key fictional work on the Fourth Dimension
2."Dracula Unbound" by Brian Aldiss (New York: Harper Collins, 1991)
3."Frankenstein Unbound" by Brian Aldiss (New York: Random House, 1973)
4."Time Cat" by Lloyd Alexander (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1963)
5."Time's Arrow" by Martin Amis (1991)
6."The Trinity Paradox" by Kevin J. Anderson & Douglas Beason (New York: Bantam, 1991)
7."The Star Wagon" by M. Anderson (Washington DC: Anderson House, 1937) play on the New York stage, got poor review in New York Times
8."The Avatar" by Poul Anderson [New York: Berkley, 1978]
9."Tau Zero" by Poul Anderson [Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1970]
10."The Corridors of Time" by Poul Anderson [New York: Lancer, 1966]
11."Tourmalin's Time Cheques" by F. Anstey [New York: D. Appleton, 1891]
12."The End of Eternity" by Isaac Asimov (1955)
13."Pilgrims Through Space and Time" by J. O. Bailey (Westport CT: Greenwich Press, 1972)
14."Berkeley Square" by J. L. Balderston (New York: Macmillan, 1941)
15."The Fall of Chronopolis" by Barrington J. Bayley (New York: Daw, 1974)
16."Before the Dawn" by Eric Temple Bell (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1934)
17."The Time Stream" by Eric Temple Bell (Providence RI: Buffalo Books Co., 1931)
18."The Trolley To Yesteday" by J. Bellairs (New York: Dial, 1989)
19."Looking Backward, 2000-1887" by Edward Bellamy (1888; reprinted New York: Bantam, 1983)See the article "Edward Bellamy's Impact on Utopian Fiction", Sam Moskowitz, as "Voyagers Through Eternity Part XVI, XXVII", Fantasy Commentator No.49, Winter 1996.
20."Timescape" by Gregory Benford [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980] the best of the modern time travel novels, even though only subatomic tachyons do the travelling
21."Changing the Past" by J. T. Berger (Boston: Little Brown, 1973)
22."The Fury Out of Time" by Lloyd Biggle [Garden City New York: Doubleday, 1965]
23."Lord Kelvin's Machine" by James P. Blaylock [New York: Ace, 1992] time travel based on the "suppressed" Maxwell's Equation
24."The Complete Time Traveler" by H. J. Blumenthal et al. (Berkley CA: Ten Speed Press, 1988)
25."Doctor Brodie's Report" by Jorge Luis Borges [New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972]
26."The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury [New York: Doubleday, 1950]
27."Time and Chance" by Alan Brennert (New York: Tor, 1990)
28."The Gap in the Curtain" by John Buchan [London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1932]
29."Sphereland" by D. Burger [New York: Harper & Row, 1983]
30."The Man Who Folded Himself" by David Gerrold (1973)
31."Past Master" by R. A. Lafferty (1968)
32."Up the Line" by Robert Silverberg (1969)
33."Our Children's Children" by Clifford Simak (1973) A dozen novels set in prehistoric times, whether or not visited by time machines, are:
1."An Age" by Brian Aldiss (London: Faber & Faber, 1967): time travel
2."Clan of the Cave Bear" by Jean Auel (19??): anthropology
3."No Enemy But Time" by Michael Bishop (19??): time travel
4."The Shores of Kansas" by Robert Chilson (Popular Books, 1976): time travel
5."Traitor to the Living" by Philip Jose Farmer (Ballentine, 1973): time travel
6."The Inheritors" by William Golding (Harcourt Brace World, 1962): anthropology
7."Speaking of Dinosaurs" by Philip High (19??): time travel
8."Before Adam" by Jack London (Macmillan, 1906): anthropology
9."The Many-Colored Land" by Julian May (19??): time travel
10."The Mists of Dawn" by Chad Oliver (Winston, 1952): anthropology
11."Quest for Fire" by J. H. Rosny-Aine' (19??) and sequels: anthropology
12."Hawksbill Station" by Robert Silverberg (Doubleday, 1968): time travel Mar 1948 Isaac Asimov's "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline" parody of a scientific paper in "Astounding", about a chemical which dissolves just before you add water... The definitive book on time travel, its mathematical theory, its possibilities in modern Physics, and its literary exploration is Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction, by Paul Nahin [New York: American Institute of Physics, 1993]. This was a primary (but not exclusive source) for listing (alphabetically) these short works of Time Travel science fiction: [remainer of text omitted to avoid the "postercomment" compression filter]
Ummmm... Ted Nelson is neither British nor a scientist. He merely invented hypertext and hypermedia.
"Other examples of hyperlinks also predate BT's patent, including a 1965 book by British scientist Ted Nelson..."
How do I know? Because I co-implemented the first working hypertext and hypermedia on personal computers, for Ted, and demo'd it at the world's first personal computer conference, in Philadelphia, in -- was it 1976?
That was before Radio Shack, IBM, or Apple even made personal computers...
Ted Nelson is merely a grandfather of the World Wide Web. Remind me -- what exactly did BT do except shove electrons through wires?
Wired and BT are BOTH wrong.
I say: fly Ted Nelson by Concorde to the trial and treat him as the VIP he is, pay hom $1,000 and hour as an epert witness, and then give him a share of the winnings in court!
I got my M.S. in Computer and Information Science, specializing in Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence, from the respectable University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Of course, this might not have been possible if I hadn't started programming in 1966 (IBM 1130, Fortran IV), earned a B.S. in Mathematics from Caltech, earned a B.S. in English Literature, and gained consulting, management, research, and teaching experience first.
Maybe it can be done in under a year, but not by me. BTW, my 12-year-old son just aced his college entrance exams (equivalent 1250 SAT), and has been strongly encouraged by Cal State L.A. to start college as a 13-year-old freshman.
As all the posters say, CS is not just programming. I taught 12 different programming languages in grad school, but also Artificial Intelligence, Compiler Theory, Graph Theory, and so forth.
Even with my extensive experience, I still got bogged down in the Ph.D. process. I wrote what is arguably the world's first Ph.D. dissertation in what's now called nanotechnology (I called it Molecular Cybernetics), but the ad hoc thesis committee never became a formal thesis committee, so my dissertation was neither approved nor rejected.
Don't expect a Royal Road to any degree. The exception: get rich, make a nice donation to the school, and they'll skip the danged degrees and make you an Adjunct Professor.
Type "science fiction television" into GOOGLE and the Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide comes in #5 in the world, this week. There a lot about Sci-Fi TV of the 1950s (including the Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein connections). Some of what it says about Sci-Fi TV of the 1940s:
1940s: Science Fiction TV 1940-1949
Captain Video and His Video Rangers, Dumont,
27 Jun 1949-1 Apr 1955
This was a historically significant show, despite the astonishingly stingy prop budget of $25 per week. Why? Because it was the first and most successful of three children's science fiction shows that seduced kids into the axioms of the Space Opera genre, the other two being "Space Patrol" and "Tom Corbett--Space Cadet." It can be argued that this created some of the popular support that allowed for a genuine space program only a few years later. A wonderful book about these shows is "The Great Television Heroes" by Donald F. Glut and Jim Harmon.
The government played no significant role in scientific genius Captain Video single-handedly saving the world out of a sense of civic duty. By so doing, he not only defeated evildoers such as Dr. Clysmok, Dahoumie, Heng Foo Seeng, Kul of Eos, Mook the Moon Man, and Nargola, but also had a chance to field-test his gadgets, including The Atomic Rifle, the Discatron, the Optical Scillometer, the Radio Scillograph, and the Cosmic Ray Vibrator (stop giggling, will you?).
His most fiendish adversary was Dr. Pauli, who had his own set of super-duper hardware, including the Barrier of Silence (later parodied on "Get Smart"), the Cloak of Invisibility, and the Trisonic Compensator. The Dumont Network (whose demise alone could end this popular show) sold to their viewers such premiums as Decoder Rings, Space Helmets, and plastic copies of Captain Video's weaponry, almost all of which are highly collectable today.
Late in its life, the show was retitled "The Secret Files of Captain Video" and they stopped editing in stock footage of Westerns through the money-saving "Remote Carrier Beam."
Captain Video's spaceship was called the "Galaxy" -- and every child wished to be Captain Video's sidekick "The Ranger" and ride the Galaxy to exotic destinations, whether or not the instruments on the control panel were obviously painted on.
Captain Video (1949-50) -- Richard Coogan
Captain Video (1950-55) -- Al Hodge (formerly the voice of "The Green Hornet" on radio)
The Ranger -- Don Hastings
Dr. Pauli (1949) -- Bran Mossen
Dr. Pauli (1949-55) -- Hal Conklin
Creator/Producer -- James Caddigan
Producer -- Larry Menkin
Writer -- Maurice C. Brockhauser, and later: Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Sheckley, and Jack Vance
Music -- Wagner's Overture to the Flying Dutchman
Lights Out, NBC, 19 July 1949-29 Sep 1952
Spun off from the hit radio show which began in 1934, there were four television specials produced by Fred Coe (Goodyear TV Playhouse,
Producer's Showcase, 1955 Emmy for Best Producer of a Live Series) in 1946, and then after three years of development hell, this fine suspense anthology. Each epsiode opened with an extreme close-up of a pair of eyes, cutting to a close-up of a bloody hand reaching for the light switch, and a voice-over of a chilling laugh and the catch-phrase "lights out, everybody!"
Each episode was shot live. Some were adaptations of classic short stories, others were developed specially for this series.
Narrator (1949-50) -- Jack LaRue
Narrator (1950-52) -- Frank Gallop
Musical Effects:
Theremin -- Paul Lipman (1949)
Organ (1949-52) -- Arlo Hults
Harp (1950-52) -- Doris Johnson
Began on radio (1934) and 4 specials
(produced by Fred Coe) on TV (1946)
Guest Stars: Boris Karloff, Eddie Albert, Billie Burke, Yvonne DeCarlo, Raymond Massey, Burgess Meredith, Leslie Nielsen, Basil Rathbone
The Secret Files of Captain Video -- see Captain Video and His Video Rangers (1940s)
Starring Boris Karloff, ABC, Sep 1949-Dec 1949
starting with 27 Oct 1949 episode name changed to "Mystery Playhouse Starring Boris Karloff."
Host -- Boris Karloff
The Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide is in the last couple of months of its 6th year online. Go to http:/magicdragon.com and click on "Science Fiction", and then click on TV, or Movies, or Authors, or Genres, or Countries, or whatever. See why this labor-of-love free information domain gets over 1,200,000 visitors a year...
The co-webmaster, who posted this teaser, is in the Open Source Community, was once on the Board of Directors of Brave New Worlds, Inc., and still has 3,600 shares of VALinux, umm, I mean VA Software left from VA's acquisition of Brave New Worlds...
From ,
click on "Science Fiction", click on "Countries":
RUSSIA
A strong case can be made that Russian science fiction is second only to English-language science fiction in quality and quantity, and in many cases science fiction books sell in more copies in Russia than anywhere else. Whether or not the authors get paid is another story.
Of course, the American intelligence forces, with time-scanners, saw the impact of young Isaac Asimov, and covertly paid his family's way over to Brooklyn, New York, to keep Russia from taking over the SF world.
Russia beat America into space with Sputnik, the definitive event that showed the world that science fiction dreams of spaceflight were now
reality, and hammered home the point with the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin. Russian authors had created the fictions that led to this
reality.
1892 Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), the Father of Space Rocketry, publishes his first science fiction story "On the Moon" in a Moscow magazine
1895 Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), the Father of Space Rocketry, publishes his second science fiction story "Dreams of the Earth and the Sky and the Effects of Universal Gravitation" and describes in fiction an artificial satellite -- the predecessor of Sputnik, as it were
1895 A. N. Goncharov also publishes a satellite story "Fantasies of Earth and Sky" in Moscow
An important reference work on Russian SF is "Russian Science Fiction Novel" by Anatolij Britikov (Moscow: Nauka and the Soviet Academy of
Sciences, 1970).
I am going to add, soon, some notes on these particularly important Russian science fiction authors:
* A. Belayev
* M. A. Bulgakov
* Anatoly Dneprov
* Mikhail Emtsov
* I. Lukodianov
* Georgui Martinov
* V. A. Obruchev
* E. Parnov
* Victor Saparin, "The Trial of Tantalus"
* The Brothers Strugatsky (Arkadi and Boris)
* A. Tertz (A. D. Siniavskii)
* A. Tolstoi
* Konstantin Tsiolkovski (father of the Spaceship AND Rusian space fiction)
* Ilya Varshavsky
* I. A. Yefremov
* Evgeni Zamiatin
Filip Schils Abidjan, Ivory Coast, icq : 6951680 e-mailed on 2 June 1998 to say:
"I am familiar with the "Russian classics" re: Zamyatin, Jevgeni & Arkadi Strugatski. I think you could add Vassilli Akhsionov to your essay as he often uses "SF" settings and styles in his books. If I am not mistaken he has also a scientific education (doctor ?), his style is very experimental using poetry, song texts. He is a scion of the Thaw period and should surely have been mentioned by Yevtuchenko....I am very much interested in other links on Russian SF..."
Eugene Zamiatin (1884-Mar 1937) [Evgeni Ivanovich Zamiatin] Russian dystopian novelist, banned in the USSR, of the influential "We" (New York: Dutton, 1924, tr. by Gregory Zilboorg) which surely influenced George Orwell's "1984" -- a global state where people are denied names and love.
Important SF figures born in Russia who emigrated include:
* Boris Artzybasheff (25 May 1899-?) American artist born in Kharkov (Russia) and trained in St.Petersburg (1909-1918);
* Isaac Asimov
* Reginald Bretnor
* George Gamow (scientist/science writer)
* Ayn Rand
* many who recently emigrated to Israel (see entry on Israel)
Charles Angoff (1902-?), Russian-born American newpaperman, English professor, editor, author of fantasy anthology "Adventures in Heaven" (New York: Ackerman, 1945), nothing on the Web?
One Russian member of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America:
* Alexander Korzhenevski
Russian SF book publishers include:
* Detgiz
* Mir
* Molodaja Gvardija
* Mysl
* Znanije
Important magazines include:
* Junost (circulation hit over 2,000,000)
* Nauka i zjisn
* Teknika-molodezji
* Sveta
* Vokrug Sveta (circulation almost 3,000,000)
* Znanije-Sila
32 Russian Science Fiction films/TV series include:
* The Amphibian Man (1962)
* "Gostya iz buduschego" (1984) (mini)TV Series
...aka "Guest from the Future" (1984) (mini)
* "Krakh inzhenera Garina" (1973)(mini)TV Series
...aka "Failure of Engineer Garin" (1973) (mini)
* Abdulladzhan, ili posvyaschayestya Stivenu Spilbergu (1991)
...aka Abdulladzhan, or Dedicated To Steven Spielberg (1991)
* Aelita (1924) a classic!
...aka Revolt of the Robots (1924)
...aka Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924)
* Charodei (1982) (TV) very popular
...aka Magicians (1982) (TV)
* Chelovek-nevidimka (1984)
...aka Invisible Man, The (1984)
* Cherez ternii k zvezdam (1981)
...aka Per Aspera Ad Astra (1981)
...aka To the Stars By Hard Ways (1982) (US title)
...aka Humanoid Woman (1981)
* The Death Ray (1925)
* Es ist nicht leicht ein Gott zu sein (1989)
...aka Trudno Byt Bogom (1989)
...aka Hard to Be a God (1989) [from the novel by the Strugatski brothers]
* I Was a Sputnik of the Sun (1958)
* Inoplanetyanka (1984)
...aka Extraterrestrial Women, The (1984)
* Iskusheniye B. (1990)
...aka Temptation of B. (1990)
* Kin-Dza-Dza (1986) very popular
* Klatwa doliny wezy (1988)
...aka Curse of Snakes Valley (1988)
...aka Zaklyatie doliny zmei (1988) (Russian title)
...aka Madude oru needus (1988)
* Krik delfina (1986)
...aka Cry of a Dolphin (1986)
* Moon Rainbow (1985)
* Moskva-Kassiopeya (1973)
...aka Moscow - Cassiopea (1973)
* Nebo Zovet (1959)
...aka Battle Beyond the Sun (1962) (US title)
...aka Sky Calls, The (1959)
...aka Heavens Call, The (1959)
...aka Sky Is Calling, The (1959)
* Ocharovatelnye prisheltsy (1991)
...aka Charming Aliens (1991)
* Otroki vo Vselennoy (1974)
...aka Teenagers in Space (1974)
...aka Boys In the Universe (1974)
* Planeta Burg (1962)
...aka Planet of Storms (1962)
...aka Planet of Tempests (1962)
...aka Storm Planet (1962)
...aka Cosmonauts on Venus (1962)
* Pokhischeniye charodeya (1989)
...aka Kidnapping of a Wizard (1989)
* Priklyucheniya Elektronika (1979) (TV)
...aka Adventures of the Electronic, The (1979) (TV)
* Solaris (1972) classic, based on Staislaw Lem novel
* Stalker (1979)
* Strannaya istoriya doktora Dzhekila i mistera Haida (1985)
...aka Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The (1985)
* Taina zheleznoi dveri (1970)
...aka Secret of the Iron Door, The (1970)
* Tretya planeta (1991)
* Unikum (1983)...aka Phenomenon (1983)
* Yevo zvali Robert (1967)
...aka We Called Him Robert (1967)
* Zaveschaniye professora Dowelya (1984)
...aka Testament of Professor Dowell (1984)
The story "The Blind Pilot" by Nathalie-Charles Henneberg, translated by
Damon Knight, appears (pp.250-265) in "The World Treasury of Science Fiction", edited by David G.
Hartwell, Boston: Little Brown, 1989 (and released by Book of the Month
Club).
Hartwell comments "Nathalie-Charles Henneberg, who is RUSSIAN, met her Alsatian-German husband in Syria when he was in the French Foreign Legion. They began writing SF in French in the 1950s, and until his death in 1959 they signed their collaborations with his name.... Nathalie went on to become a prolific novelist, the 'most read' French SF writer in France in the 1960s, according to [Damon] Knight. This story bears an
uncanny resemblance in atmosphere to the early works of the American writer Roger Zelazny, which it predates."
The story "I was the First to Find You" by Kirill Bulychev, translated by Helen Saltz Jacobson, appears (pp.690-700) in "The World Treasury of Science Fiction", edited by David G. Hartwell, Boston: Little Brown, 1989 (and released
by Book of the Month Club).
Hartwell comments "Among the most versatile and popular SF writers in the Soviet Union, Kirill Bulychev is one of a group of younger Soviet writers to emerge in the 1960s. Above all, his talent for storytelling and his interest in human characters interacting with SF problems make him a particularly effective representative of recent Soviet SF. The strain of utopianism remains strong in Eastern European SF and sinks many stories with didacticism, but Bulychev is able to sustain his delight in the wonders of the technological future, as in the days of [American
editor/author] John W. Campbell. And, of course, the influence of Campbell-style SF itself, in this case [A. E.] Van Vogt's 'Far Centaurus'
is clearly present."
Joe Haldeman/Forever War data
on
The Forever War
·
· Score: 3, Informative
From The Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide:
<http://magicdragon.com>, click on "Science Fiction"
Joe Haldeman, full name Joe William Haldeman:
Hugo Awards 1976, 77, 91, 95
Locus Poll Award 1976
Nebula Awards 1975, 90, 93
World Fantasy Award 1993
HOMer Award 1994
SF Chronicle Award 1995
Joe Haldeman@sff.net
Joe [William] Haldeman, born Oklahoma City 9 Jun 1943, son of Jack Carroll Haldeman and Lorena Spivey, married Mary Gay Potter 21 Aug 1965, author:
* War Year [Holt, 1972]
* Cosmic Laughter, 1974
* The Forever War [St.Martins, 1975; Science Fiction Book Club; Ballentine Books]
* Mindbridge [St.Martins, 1976; Science Fiction Book Club; Ballentine Books]
* Planet of Judgment, 1977
* All My Sins Remembered, 1977
* Study War No More, 1977
* Infinite Dreams, 1978
* Worlds Without End, 1979
* Worlds, 1981 (with brother Jack C. Haldeman II)
* There Is No Darkness, 1983
* Worlds Apart, 1983
* Tool of the Trade, 1987
* Buying Time [William Morrow, June 1989] IMMORTALITY ISBN 0-688-07244-5, a.k.a. "The Long Habit of Living"
* The Hemingway Hoax [Morrow, Jun 1990] TIME TRAVEL 0-688-09024-9
* More Than the Sum of His Parts [Pulphouse (Short Story Paperback), May 1991]
ISBN 1-56146-514-3
* 1968 [London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1994; Morrow, 1995] SF/Vietnam Autobiographical, highly recommended
* Forever Peace [Ace , Oct 1997] ISBN 0-441-00406-7, sequel to The Forever War
* also the "Attar the Merman" series
* some "Star Trek" novels:
* Planet of Judgement [Bantam, 1977]
* Star Trek: World Without End [Bantam, 1979; June 1993]
Anthologies and Collections Edited:
* Nebula Awards 17 [Holt, 1983]
* Dealing in Futures [Viking, 1985] 11 stories + 3 poems
* Body Armor: 2000 (co-anthologists Martin H. Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh)
[Ace, Apr 1986] 11 Military/SF stories, ISBN 0-441-06976-2
* Space-Fighters (co-anthologists Martin H. Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh)
[Ace, Apr 1988] 15 stories, ISBN 0-441-77786-4
* Supertanks (co-anthologists Martin H. Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh)
[Ace, Apr 1987] 10 stories, ISBN 0-441-79106-9
* Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds [NESFA Press, Feb 1993] ISBN 0-915368-52-8
4 stories + 5 essays + 4 poems + long intro
* None So Blind [Morrow AvoNova, May 1996] ISBN 0-688-14779-8
Collection of 11 stories + poems
* Saul's Death & Other Poems [Anamnesis Press, June 1997] ISBN 0-9631203-4-4
$10.95, 77pp, trade paperback, cover artists: Toni Luna Montealegre,
SF/Fantasy Poetry collection (32 poems)
B.S. 1967 in Physics and Astronomy, University of Maryland;
MFA in English 1975 University of Iowa;
Associate Professor of Writing Program 1983-87, M.I.T.; served with U.S. Army 1967-69, decorated Purple Heart; recipient Hugo Award 1976, 1977; Nebula Award 1975; Lifetime Active Member of Science Fiction Writers of America, Authors Guild, Poets & Writers Inc.
BEYOND THE FIELDS WE KNOW: Tolkien's magical world unconnected to ours
Beyond Tolkein's literary sources, it is important to understand the "open source" nature of the collaborative environment he had with "The Inklings" (including C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams). Also, it is crucial to know his literary software development methodology, which he called "subcreation." I believe that many deep software projects are examples of "subcreation" --including all Role Playing Games, much literary hypertext, and the sense in which any coder is a god-like subcreator of an complete, consistent, imaginary yet interactive world.
"Beyond the Fields We Know" is a haunting phrase by Lord Dunsany.
This is (as Baird Searles, Beth Meacham, and Michael Franklin point out ["A Reader's Guide to Fantasy", New York: Avon, 1982] a fine description of tales in which all the action happens in a magical world unconnected to our own by space or time. "The Lord of the Rings", by J. R. R. Tolkein, is a superb example. Tolkein said that the author of such fiction is engaged in "subcreation" of the other world, with an inner consistency and conviction:
"To experience directly a Secondary World, the potion is too strong, and you give to it Primary Belief, however marvellous the events. You are deluded -- whether that is the intention of the elves (always or at any time) is another question. They at any rate are not deluded. This is for them a form of Art, and distinct from Wizardry or Magic, properly so called" [J. R. R. Tolkien, "On Fairy Stories", in "Tree and Leaf", 1964].
David Hartwell [Age of Wonders, New York: Walker, 1984, p.14] summarizes this genre as "Tolkienesque fantasy, in the manner of Lord of the Rings -- carefully constructed worlds as the setting for a heroic quest."
Here we mean tales of a world sufficient unto itself, with its own history, geography, cultures, races, and nonhuman beings. There is a greater or lesser degree of magic, sometimes central to the action, sometimes part of
the taken-for-granted background, but always as something distinguishing this world from our technological one.
When we read such fiction, we feel ourselves drawn into the other world, and taking it as real, so that when we close the book, it is hard to wrench ourselves away from that world and reluctantly return to home. To capture the dream, we read the book again, or perhaps look for others that will produce the same magical emotion. Beowulf and the Icelandic Sagas certainly qualify.
For a list of 90+ such books, see my web page (from which this posting is drawn):
http://magicdragon.com/
then click on "Science Fiction", then
"Genres", then "Beyond the Fields We Know."
"Me Human, You Alien: How to Talk to an Extraterrestrial"
by
Jonathan Vos Post
(c) 1996 by Emerald City Publishing
an excerpt from a book entitled
MAKING CONTACT: A SERIOUS HANDBOOK FOR
LOCATING AND COMMUNICATING WITH EXTRATERRESTRIALS,
edited by Bill Fawcett,
July 1997, New York: William Morrow & Co.
http://www.magicdragon.com/EmeraldCity/extraterres trials/alien.html
This has original ideas on how you, personally, should best prepare to communicate with ETs, including what to carry in your pockets. It also has the best review of Science Fiction approaches to the concept, as well as anthropology and linguistics.
Planets, moons, and comets also have cubic kilometers of ice from which to build neutrino telescopes. I was the first to conceive of this, and publish technical details in such
places as:
"HUMAN AND ROBOTIC PRECURSOR MISSIONS
TO THE POLAR ICECAPS OF MERCURY"
http://magicdragon.com/ComputerFutures/SpacePubl ic ations/Mercury_Ice.html
and
Jonathan V. Post, "Lunar Farside,
Mars Polar Cap, and Mercury Polar Cap
Neutrino Experiments", Proceedings of
Space 92 (3rd International Conference
on Engineering, Construction and
Operations in Space), pp. 2252-2263, ed.
Willy H. Sadeh, Stein Sture, Russell J.
Miller, 31 May - 4 June 1992, Denver,
CO, American Society of Civil
Engineers, New York [1st published
proposal for robotic & human missions
to icy poles of Mercury]
The south pole of Mars (water plus dry ice) is one other place where we can do this... giving us
a good baseline for "binocular vision" between Earth-based and planet-based neutrino telescopes.
We can also use undergound tanks of oxygen and hydrogen beneath a Moon Base, where the fuel and human consumable storage does double duty as a science instrument.
True, it's only the story of the day/week/month
if it turns out to be true, which is a long shot.
But any meteorite from the asteroid belt to Earth
is, by definition, a very long shot anyway...
Now about the impact turning Sodom and Gomorrah into Ground Zero, and Lot's wife turning around (against orders) to view the impact fireball and being transmogrified...
Now, what's the chemistry for turning into a
piller of salt from watching a meteorite impact?
And are Middle Eastern Genii (Genies, Jinns) actually the ghosts of aliens, as in the computer-animated feature film "Final Fantasy?"
This thread misses the point: Science Fiction
literature is a highly distributed content creation/distribution
system, with roughly 10,000 authors. The system
will stand the test of time precisely because of
network economy and the quality of content.
Time for p2p with micropayments to those authors?
See my little web site:
http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/authors.ht ml
An annotated list of 3,284 links; also some brief
notes on 6,108 authors and pseudonyms NOT on the Internet, for a total of
9,392 authors' hotlinks or names or pseudonyms or notes.
This is arguably the largest on-line encyclopedia of science fiction
authors (which includes copious external hotlinks and e-mail links) known
to exist. Total length exceeds 3.7 Megabytes of text. It includes over
1,550 non-biographical encyclopedia entries on Fantasy and Science Fiction
terms. There are many other bibliographic websites (typically lacking
external hotlinks), and they are referenced.
The parent domain http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/
slices that distributed system by chronology, theme,
country, and other dimensions.
This thread misses the point: Science Fiction
literature is a highly distributed content creation/distribution system, with roughly 10,000 authors. The system (not some sample of 5 authors) will stand the test of time precisely because of network economy and the quality of content. Time for p2p with micropayments to those authors?
See my little web site:
An annotated list of 3,284 links, also some brief notes on 6,108 authors and pseudonyms NOT on the Internet, for a total of 9,392 authors' hotlinks or names or pseudonyms or notes.
This is arguably the largest on-line encyclopedia of science fiction authors (which includes copious external hotlinks and e-mail links) known to exist. Total length exceeds 3.7 Megabytes of text. It includes over 1,550 non-biographical encyclopedia entries on Fantasy and Science Fiction terms. There are many other bibliographic websites (typically lacking external hotlinks), and they are referenced.
The parent domain
slices that distributed system by chronology, theme, country, and other dimensions.
I have plenty of favorite authors -- after all, my co-authors and co-editors include Asimov, Bradbury, Brin, Clarke, Feynman, Heinlein,
Sturgeon, L. Sprague de Camp and others -- but it is the SYSTEM, the culture of science fiction, that must be seen as an integrated whole.
Feynman was a mentor of mine (back when
I arrived at Caltech in 1968 on full scholarship at age 16 to study physics) and I actually co-authored a published and anthologized Science poem
with Feynman. He was the acknowledged Great Grandfather of Nanotechnology, I was one of the many grandfathers of Nanotechnology, having done my doctoral dissertation on it (I called it "molecular cybernetics" in 1975-77), before Eric Drexler (the acknowledged father of nanotechnology). I got in contact with Drexler in 1979, when I was at Boeing's Kent Space Center, through our mutual friend Ray Sperber. Drexler insisted that none of us would publish until we thrashed out the safety issues. Then he jumped the gun and published first -- a good article in the NY Academy of Sciences. I'd already gotten Omni magazine (where I'd had 2 cover stories published, including the one that coined the phrase "Cybernetic War" in May 1979)hot to write about Nanotechnology. Then I introduced Eric to Stanley Schmidt, Ph.D., editor of Analog, who gave Eric important early support in the Science Fiction Community. I wish I'd published first, but maybe Eric was right to ask for a period of silence. I did, later, publish key chapters of my Nanotech dissertation in the proceedings of international conferences, and in refereed journals, but Mrs. Drexler (C. Peterson) is more involved in assering her husband's primacy in the field than in maintaining objective historiography. Be that as it may.... Now the Schrodinger's Cat is out of the Bagh, dad!
URL for "Fat Slobs in Space"
on
Beer In Space
·
· Score: 1
Check out my weird-but-true article
"Fat Slobs in Space."
URL is:
http://magicdragon.com/ComputerFutures/
SpacePublications/Food.html
I've worked with the Space program many years...
"... First of all, being seriously overweight might just be the best way to avoid the motion sickness that plagues a third of astronauts in orbit.... if you are grossly obese, we cannot get you sick."
NASA data: "Fat Slobs in Space"
on
Beer In Space
·
· Score: 1
Check out my weird-but-true article
"Fat Slobs in Space."
I've worked with the Space program many years...
"... First of all, being seriously overweight might just be the best way to avoid the motion sickness that plagues a third of astronauts in orbit.... if you are grossly obese, we cannot get you sick."
I co-edited the definitive book on the subject,
with the listed editors ARTHUR C. CLARKE and
DAVID BRIN. The title was "Project Solar Sail",
and there are still about 75,000 used copies
of the paperback out there in North America...
The book, published by the ROC division of
New American Library, had a selection of fiction
about Solar Sails -- from some famous authors --
plus new nonfiction, illustrations, and short version of a longer poem on the subject which I coauthored with Ray Bradbury.
It is listed on Amazon, with rave reviews...
The time for Solar Sailing has come... As Clarke says, for most of the long history (including the future) of humanity, "ship" will more often mean vessels in space than vessels in water...
Slashdot Mirror
my page on Time Travel, in fact and fiction,
is at magicdragon.com
click on "genres" or "if you like this,
you'll like that" and then after 600k text page loads, click on "time travel"
excerpt (text only) follows.
TIME TRAVEL:
time machines, travel to the past or the future
Some important early time travel subcategories, and their first published examples include:
1.Present to Future: "Anno 7603", by Norwegian playwright Johan Hermann Wessel (1781)
2.Present to Past: "Missing One's Coach", anonymous, Dublin Literary Magazine, 1838, sends narrator back a millennium
3.Future to Present: "An Uncommon Sort of Spectre", Edward Page Mitchell, 1879 (or should I count the Ghost of Christmas Future in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" (1843)?
4.Past to Present: "The Hour Glass", Robert Barr, [The Strand magazine, December 1898]
5.Time Machine: 7 years before H. G. Well's "The Time Machine", there was "The Clock That Went Backwards", by Edward Page Mitchell, [The New York Sun, 18 September 1881]
Some other memorable time travel novels are:
1."Flatland" by E. A. Abbott [reprint New York: Penguin, 1986] not actually about time travel, but the key fictional work on the Fourth Dimension
2."Dracula Unbound" by Brian Aldiss (New York: Harper Collins, 1991)
3."Frankenstein Unbound" by Brian Aldiss (New York: Random House, 1973)
4."Time Cat" by Lloyd Alexander (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1963)
5."Time's Arrow" by Martin Amis (1991)
6."The Trinity Paradox" by Kevin J. Anderson & Douglas Beason (New York: Bantam, 1991)
7."The Star Wagon" by M. Anderson (Washington DC: Anderson House, 1937) play on the New York stage, got poor review in New York Times
8."The Avatar" by Poul Anderson [New York: Berkley, 1978]
9."Tau Zero" by Poul Anderson [Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1970]
10."The Corridors of Time" by Poul Anderson [New York: Lancer, 1966]
11."Tourmalin's Time Cheques" by F. Anstey [New York: D. Appleton, 1891]
12."The End of Eternity" by Isaac Asimov (1955)
13."Pilgrims Through Space and Time" by J. O. Bailey (Westport CT: Greenwich Press, 1972)
14."Berkeley Square" by J. L. Balderston (New York: Macmillan, 1941)
15."The Fall of Chronopolis" by Barrington J. Bayley (New York: Daw, 1974)
16."Before the Dawn" by Eric Temple Bell (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1934)
17."The Time Stream" by Eric Temple Bell (Providence RI: Buffalo Books Co., 1931)
18."The Trolley To Yesteday" by J. Bellairs (New York: Dial, 1989)
19."Looking Backward, 2000-1887" by Edward Bellamy (1888; reprinted New York: Bantam, 1983)See the article "Edward Bellamy's Impact on Utopian Fiction", Sam Moskowitz, as "Voyagers Through Eternity Part XVI, XXVII", Fantasy Commentator No.49, Winter 1996.
20."Timescape" by Gregory Benford [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980] the best of the modern time travel novels, even though only subatomic tachyons do the travelling
21."Changing the Past" by J. T. Berger (Boston: Little Brown, 1973)
22."The Fury Out of Time" by Lloyd Biggle [Garden City New York: Doubleday, 1965]
23."Lord Kelvin's Machine" by James P. Blaylock [New York: Ace, 1992] time travel based on the "suppressed" Maxwell's Equation
24."The Complete Time Traveler" by H. J. Blumenthal et al. (Berkley CA: Ten Speed Press, 1988)
25."Doctor Brodie's Report" by Jorge Luis Borges [New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972]
26."The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury [New York: Doubleday, 1950]
27."Time and Chance" by Alan Brennert (New York: Tor, 1990)
28."The Gap in the Curtain" by John Buchan [London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1932]
29."Sphereland" by D. Burger [New York: Harper & Row, 1983]
30."The Man Who Folded Himself" by David Gerrold (1973)
31."Past Master" by R. A. Lafferty (1968)
32."Up the Line" by Robert Silverberg (1969)
33."Our Children's Children" by Clifford Simak (1973)
A dozen novels set in prehistoric times, whether or not visited by time machines, are:
1."An Age" by Brian Aldiss (London: Faber & Faber, 1967): time travel
2."Clan of the Cave Bear" by Jean Auel (19??): anthropology
3."No Enemy But Time" by Michael Bishop (19??): time travel
4."The Shores of Kansas" by Robert Chilson (Popular Books, 1976): time travel
5."Traitor to the Living" by Philip Jose Farmer (Ballentine, 1973): time travel
6."The Inheritors" by William Golding (Harcourt Brace World, 1962): anthropology
7."Speaking of Dinosaurs" by Philip High (19??): time travel
8."Before Adam" by Jack London (Macmillan, 1906): anthropology
9."The Many-Colored Land" by Julian May (19??): time travel
10."The Mists of Dawn" by Chad Oliver (Winston, 1952): anthropology
11."Quest for Fire" by J. H. Rosny-Aine' (19??) and sequels: anthropology
12."Hawksbill Station" by Robert Silverberg (Doubleday, 1968): time travel
Mar 1948 Isaac Asimov's "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline" parody of a scientific paper in "Astounding", about a
chemical which dissolves just before you add water...
The definitive book on time travel, its mathematical theory, its possibilities in modern Physics, and its literary exploration is
Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science
Fiction, by Paul Nahin [New York: American Institute of Physics,
1993]. This was a primary (but not exclusive source) for listing
(alphabetically) these short works of Time Travel science fiction:
[remainer of text omitted to avoid the "postercomment" compression filter]
Ummmm... Ted Nelson is neither British nor a scientist. He merely invented hypertext and hypermedia.
"Other examples of hyperlinks also predate BT's patent, including a 1965 book by British scientist Ted Nelson..."
How do I know? Because I co-implemented the first working hypertext and hypermedia on personal computers, for Ted, and demo'd it at the world's first personal computer conference, in Philadelphia, in -- was it 1976?
That was before Radio Shack, IBM, or Apple even made personal computers...
Ted Nelson is merely a grandfather of the World Wide Web. Remind me -- what exactly did BT do except shove electrons through wires?
Wired and BT are BOTH wrong.
I say: fly Ted Nelson by Concorde to the trial and treat him as the VIP he is, pay hom $1,000 and hour as an epert witness, and then give him a share of the winnings in court!
Sue first and ask questions later? That leads to the impasse defined in the third couplet of my 1992 poem:
N A. html
http://www.magicdragon.com/EmeraldCity/Poetry/D
THE TWILIGHT OF GENETIC ENGINEERING
by
JONATHAN VOS POST
Jungle-floor bacteria devour helicopters after war;
ripped human corpses thaw, screaming, in battle zone
Smog-sucking moss evolves to grow on auto bumpers;
gas-tank tapeworm writhes: blind premium dreams
Heavy weaponry of corporate wars, intractable
ultimatum when lawyers subpoena their own DNA
Cockroaches skitter: dust of broken televisions;
lay phosphorescent eggs between commercials
Reunification pressures force abandonment of immortality;
death substitutes for taxes: final cost of doing business
Skinned headless lizard throbs, shoved into your chest:
replicant replaces your broken-once-too-often heart
Time & nucleotide
wait for no man
2300-2320
15 Sep 1992
I got my M.S. in Computer and Information Science, specializing in Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence, from the respectable University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Of course, this might not have been possible if I hadn't started programming in 1966 (IBM 1130, Fortran IV), earned a B.S. in Mathematics from Caltech, earned a B.S. in English Literature, and gained consulting, management, research, and teaching experience first.
Maybe it can be done in under a year, but not by me. BTW, my 12-year-old son just aced his college entrance exams (equivalent 1250 SAT), and has been strongly encouraged by Cal State L.A. to start college as a 13-year-old freshman.
As all the posters say, CS is not just programming. I taught 12 different programming languages in grad school, but also Artificial Intelligence, Compiler Theory, Graph Theory, and so forth.
Even with my extensive experience, I still got bogged down in the Ph.D. process. I wrote what is arguably the world's first Ph.D. dissertation in what's now called nanotechnology (I called it Molecular Cybernetics), but the ad hoc thesis committee never became a formal thesis committee, so my dissertation was neither approved nor rejected.
Don't expect a Royal Road to any degree. The exception: get rich, make a nice donation to the school, and they'll skip the danged degrees and make you an Adjunct Professor.
Type "science fiction television" into GOOGLE and the Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide comes in #5 in the world, this week. There a lot about Sci-Fi TV of the 1950s (including the Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein connections). Some of what it says about Sci-Fi TV of the 1940s:
1940s: Science Fiction TV 1940-1949
Captain Video and His Video Rangers, Dumont,
27 Jun 1949-1 Apr 1955
This was a historically significant show, despite the astonishingly stingy prop budget of $25 per week. Why? Because it was the first and most successful of three children's science fiction shows that seduced kids into the axioms of the Space Opera genre, the other two being "Space Patrol" and "Tom Corbett--Space Cadet." It can be argued that this created some of the popular support that allowed for a genuine space program only a few years later. A wonderful book about these shows is "The Great Television Heroes" by Donald F. Glut and Jim Harmon.
The government played no significant role in scientific genius Captain Video single-handedly saving the world out of a sense of civic duty. By so doing, he not only defeated evildoers such as Dr. Clysmok, Dahoumie, Heng Foo Seeng, Kul of Eos, Mook the Moon Man, and Nargola, but also had a chance to field-test his gadgets, including The Atomic Rifle, the Discatron, the Optical Scillometer, the Radio Scillograph, and the Cosmic Ray Vibrator (stop giggling, will you?).
His most fiendish adversary was Dr. Pauli, who had his own set of super-duper hardware, including the Barrier of Silence (later parodied on "Get Smart"), the Cloak of Invisibility, and the Trisonic Compensator. The Dumont Network (whose demise alone could end this popular show) sold to their viewers such premiums as Decoder Rings, Space Helmets, and plastic copies of Captain Video's weaponry, almost all of which are highly collectable today.
Late in its life, the show was retitled "The Secret Files of Captain Video" and they stopped editing in stock footage of Westerns through the money-saving "Remote Carrier Beam."
Captain Video's spaceship was called the "Galaxy" -- and every child wished to be Captain Video's sidekick "The Ranger" and ride the Galaxy to exotic destinations, whether or not the instruments on the control panel were obviously painted on.
Captain Video (1949-50) -- Richard Coogan
Captain Video (1950-55) -- Al Hodge (formerly the voice of "The Green Hornet" on radio)
The Ranger -- Don Hastings
Dr. Pauli (1949) -- Bran Mossen
Dr. Pauli (1949-55) -- Hal Conklin
Creator/Producer -- James Caddigan
Producer -- Larry Menkin
Writer -- Maurice C. Brockhauser, and later: Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Sheckley, and Jack Vance
Music -- Wagner's Overture to the Flying Dutchman
Lights Out, NBC, 19 July 1949-29 Sep 1952
Spun off from the hit radio show which began in 1934, there were four television specials produced by Fred Coe (Goodyear TV Playhouse,
Producer's Showcase, 1955 Emmy for Best Producer of a Live Series) in 1946, and then after three years of development hell, this fine suspense anthology. Each epsiode opened with an extreme close-up of a pair of eyes, cutting to a close-up of a bloody hand reaching for the light switch, and a voice-over of a chilling laugh and the catch-phrase "lights out, everybody!"
Each episode was shot live. Some were adaptations of classic short stories, others were developed specially for this series.
Narrator (1949-50) -- Jack LaRue
Narrator (1950-52) -- Frank Gallop
Musical Effects:
Theremin -- Paul Lipman (1949)
Organ (1949-52) -- Arlo Hults
Harp (1950-52) -- Doris Johnson
Began on radio (1934) and 4 specials
(produced by Fred Coe) on TV (1946)
Guest Stars: Boris Karloff, Eddie Albert, Billie Burke, Yvonne DeCarlo, Raymond Massey, Burgess Meredith, Leslie Nielsen, Basil Rathbone
The Secret Files of Captain Video -- see Captain Video and His Video Rangers (1940s)
Starring Boris Karloff, ABC, Sep 1949-Dec 1949
starting with 27 Oct 1949 episode name changed to "Mystery Playhouse Starring Boris Karloff."
Host -- Boris Karloff
The Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide is in the last couple of months of its 6th year online. Go to http:/magicdragon.com and click on "Science Fiction", and then click on TV, or Movies, or Authors, or Genres, or Countries, or whatever. See why this labor-of-love free information domain gets over 1,200,000 visitors a year...
The co-webmaster, who posted this teaser, is in the Open Source Community, was once on the Board of Directors of Brave New Worlds, Inc., and still has 3,600 shares of VALinux, umm, I mean VA Software left from VA's acquisition of Brave New Worlds...
From ,
...aka "Guest from the Future" (1984) (mini)
...aka "Failure of Engineer Garin" (1973) (mini)
...aka Abdulladzhan, or Dedicated To Steven Spielberg (1991)
...aka Revolt of the Robots (1924)
...aka Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924)
...aka Magicians (1982) (TV)
...aka Invisible Man, The (1984)
...aka Per Aspera Ad Astra (1981)
...aka To the Stars By Hard Ways (1982) (US title)
...aka Humanoid Woman (1981)
...aka Trudno Byt Bogom (1989)
...aka Hard to Be a God (1989) [from the novel by the Strugatski brothers]
...aka Extraterrestrial Women, The (1984)
...aka Temptation of B. (1990)
...aka Curse of Snakes Valley (1988)
...aka Zaklyatie doliny zmei (1988) (Russian title)
...aka Madude oru needus (1988)
...aka Cry of a Dolphin (1986)
...aka Moscow - Cassiopea (1973)
...aka Battle Beyond the Sun (1962) (US title)
...aka Sky Calls, The (1959)
...aka Heavens Call, The (1959)
...aka Sky Is Calling, The (1959)
...aka Charming Aliens (1991)
...aka Teenagers in Space (1974)
...aka Boys In the Universe (1974)
...aka Planet of Storms (1962)
...aka Planet of Tempests (1962)
...aka Storm Planet (1962)
...aka Cosmonauts on Venus (1962)
...aka Kidnapping of a Wizard (1989)
...aka Adventures of the Electronic, The (1979) (TV)
...aka Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The (1985)
...aka Secret of the Iron Door, The (1970)
...aka Phenomenon (1983)
...aka We Called Him Robert (1967)
...aka Testament of Professor Dowell (1984)
click on "Science Fiction", click on "Countries":
RUSSIA
A strong case can be made that Russian science fiction is second only to English-language science fiction in quality and quantity, and in many cases science fiction books sell in more copies in Russia than anywhere else. Whether or not the authors get paid is another story.
Of course, the American intelligence forces, with time-scanners, saw the impact of young Isaac Asimov, and covertly paid his family's way over to Brooklyn, New York, to keep Russia from taking over the SF world.
Russia beat America into space with Sputnik, the definitive event that showed the world that science fiction dreams of spaceflight were now
reality, and hammered home the point with the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin. Russian authors had created the fictions that led to this
reality.
1892 Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), the Father of Space Rocketry, publishes his first science fiction story "On the Moon" in a Moscow magazine
1895 Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), the Father of Space Rocketry, publishes his second science fiction story "Dreams of the Earth and the Sky and the Effects of Universal Gravitation" and describes in fiction an artificial satellite -- the predecessor of Sputnik, as it were
1895 A. N. Goncharov also publishes a satellite story "Fantasies of Earth and Sky" in Moscow
An important reference work on Russian SF is "Russian Science Fiction Novel" by Anatolij Britikov (Moscow: Nauka and the Soviet Academy of
Sciences, 1970).
I am going to add, soon, some notes on these particularly important Russian science fiction authors:
* A. Belayev
* M. A. Bulgakov
* Anatoly Dneprov
* Mikhail Emtsov
* I. Lukodianov
* Georgui Martinov
* V. A. Obruchev
* E. Parnov
* Victor Saparin, "The Trial of Tantalus"
* The Brothers Strugatsky (Arkadi and Boris)
* A. Tertz (A. D. Siniavskii)
* A. Tolstoi
* Konstantin Tsiolkovski (father of the Spaceship AND Rusian space fiction)
* Ilya Varshavsky
* I. A. Yefremov
* Evgeni Zamiatin
Filip Schils Abidjan, Ivory Coast, icq : 6951680 e-mailed on 2 June 1998 to say:
"I am familiar with the "Russian classics" re: Zamyatin, Jevgeni & Arkadi Strugatski. I think you could add Vassilli Akhsionov to your essay as he often uses "SF" settings and styles in his books. If I am not mistaken he has also a scientific education (doctor ?), his style is very experimental using poetry, song texts. He is a scion of the Thaw period and should surely have been mentioned by Yevtuchenko....I am very much interested in other links on Russian SF..."
Eugene Zamiatin (1884-Mar 1937) [Evgeni Ivanovich Zamiatin] Russian dystopian novelist, banned in the USSR, of the influential "We" (New York: Dutton, 1924, tr. by Gregory Zilboorg) which surely influenced George Orwell's "1984" -- a global state where people are denied names and love.
Important SF figures born in Russia who emigrated include:
* Boris Artzybasheff (25 May 1899-?) American artist born in Kharkov (Russia) and trained in St.Petersburg (1909-1918);
* Isaac Asimov
* Reginald Bretnor
* George Gamow (scientist/science writer)
* Ayn Rand
* many who recently emigrated to Israel (see entry on Israel)
Charles Angoff (1902-?), Russian-born American newpaperman, English professor, editor, author of fantasy anthology "Adventures in Heaven" (New York: Ackerman, 1945), nothing on the Web?
One Russian member of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America:
* Alexander Korzhenevski
Russian SF book publishers include:
* Detgiz
* Mir
* Molodaja Gvardija
* Mysl
* Znanije
Important magazines include:
* Junost (circulation hit over 2,000,000)
* Nauka i zjisn
* Teknika-molodezji
* Sveta
* Vokrug Sveta (circulation almost 3,000,000)
* Znanije-Sila
32 Russian Science Fiction films/TV series include:
* The Amphibian Man (1962)
* "Gostya iz buduschego" (1984) (mini)TV Series
* "Krakh inzhenera Garina" (1973)(mini)TV Series
* Abdulladzhan, ili posvyaschayestya Stivenu Spilbergu (1991)
* Aelita (1924) a classic!
* Charodei (1982) (TV) very popular
* Chelovek-nevidimka (1984)
* Cherez ternii k zvezdam (1981)
* The Death Ray (1925)
* Es ist nicht leicht ein Gott zu sein (1989)
* I Was a Sputnik of the Sun (1958)
* Inoplanetyanka (1984)
* Iskusheniye B. (1990)
* Kin-Dza-Dza (1986) very popular
* Klatwa doliny wezy (1988)
* Krik delfina (1986)
* Moon Rainbow (1985)
* Moskva-Kassiopeya (1973)
* Nebo Zovet (1959)
* Ocharovatelnye prisheltsy (1991)
* Otroki vo Vselennoy (1974)
* Planeta Burg (1962)
* Pokhischeniye charodeya (1989)
* Priklyucheniya Elektronika (1979) (TV)
* Solaris (1972) classic, based on Staislaw Lem novel
* Stalker (1979)
* Strannaya istoriya doktora Dzhekila i mistera Haida (1985)
* Taina zheleznoi dveri (1970)
* Tretya planeta (1991)
* Unikum (1983)
* Yevo zvali Robert (1967)
* Zaveschaniye professora Dowelya (1984)
The story "The Blind Pilot" by Nathalie-Charles Henneberg, translated by
Damon Knight, appears (pp.250-265) in "The World Treasury of Science Fiction", edited by David G.
Hartwell, Boston: Little Brown, 1989 (and released by Book of the Month
Club).
Hartwell comments "Nathalie-Charles Henneberg, who is RUSSIAN, met her Alsatian-German husband in Syria when he was in the French Foreign Legion. They began writing SF in French in the 1950s, and until his death in 1959 they signed their collaborations with his name.... Nathalie went on to become a prolific novelist, the 'most read' French SF writer in France in the 1960s, according to [Damon] Knight. This story bears an
uncanny resemblance in atmosphere to the early works of the American writer Roger Zelazny, which it predates."
The story "I was the First to Find You" by Kirill Bulychev, translated by Helen Saltz Jacobson, appears (pp.690-700) in "The World Treasury of Science Fiction", edited by David G. Hartwell, Boston: Little Brown, 1989 (and released
by Book of the Month Club).
Hartwell comments "Among the most versatile and popular SF writers in the Soviet Union, Kirill Bulychev is one of a group of younger Soviet writers to emerge in the 1960s. Above all, his talent for storytelling and his interest in human characters interacting with SF problems make him a particularly effective representative of recent Soviet SF. The strain of utopianism remains strong in Eastern European SF and sinks many stories with didacticism, but Bulychev is able to sustain his delight in the wonders of the technological future, as in the days of [American
editor/author] John W. Campbell. And, of course, the influence of Campbell-style SF itself, in this case [A. E.] Van Vogt's 'Far Centaurus'
is clearly present."
From The Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide:
<http://magicdragon.com>, click on "Science Fiction"
Joe Haldeman, full name Joe William Haldeman:
Hugo Awards 1976, 77, 91, 95
Locus Poll Award 1976
Nebula Awards 1975, 90, 93
World Fantasy Award 1993
HOMer Award 1994
SF Chronicle Award 1995
Joe Haldeman@sff.net
Joe [William] Haldeman, born Oklahoma City 9 Jun 1943, son of Jack Carroll Haldeman and Lorena Spivey, married Mary Gay Potter 21 Aug 1965, author:
* War Year [Holt, 1972]
* Cosmic Laughter, 1974
* The Forever War [St.Martins, 1975; Science Fiction Book Club; Ballentine Books]
* Mindbridge [St.Martins, 1976; Science Fiction Book Club; Ballentine Books]
* Planet of Judgment, 1977
* All My Sins Remembered, 1977
* Study War No More, 1977
* Infinite Dreams, 1978
* Worlds Without End, 1979
* Worlds, 1981 (with brother Jack C. Haldeman II)
* There Is No Darkness, 1983
* Worlds Apart, 1983
* Tool of the Trade, 1987
* Buying Time [William Morrow, June 1989] IMMORTALITY ISBN 0-688-07244-5, a.k.a. "The Long Habit of Living"
* The Hemingway Hoax [Morrow, Jun 1990] TIME TRAVEL 0-688-09024-9
* More Than the Sum of His Parts [Pulphouse (Short Story Paperback), May 1991]
ISBN 1-56146-514-3
* 1968 [London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1994; Morrow, 1995] SF/Vietnam Autobiographical, highly recommended
* Forever Peace [Ace , Oct 1997] ISBN 0-441-00406-7, sequel to The Forever War
* also the "Attar the Merman" series
* some "Star Trek" novels:
* Planet of Judgement [Bantam, 1977]
* Star Trek: World Without End [Bantam, 1979; June 1993]
Anthologies and Collections Edited:
* Nebula Awards 17 [Holt, 1983]
* Dealing in Futures [Viking, 1985] 11 stories + 3 poems
* Body Armor: 2000 (co-anthologists Martin H. Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh)
[Ace, Apr 1986] 11 Military/SF stories, ISBN 0-441-06976-2
* Space-Fighters (co-anthologists Martin H. Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh)
[Ace, Apr 1988] 15 stories, ISBN 0-441-77786-4
* Supertanks (co-anthologists Martin H. Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh)
[Ace, Apr 1987] 10 stories, ISBN 0-441-79106-9
* Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds [NESFA Press, Feb 1993] ISBN 0-915368-52-8
4 stories + 5 essays + 4 poems + long intro
* None So Blind [Morrow AvoNova, May 1996] ISBN 0-688-14779-8
Collection of 11 stories + poems
* Saul's Death & Other Poems [Anamnesis Press, June 1997] ISBN 0-9631203-4-4
$10.95, 77pp, trade paperback, cover artists: Toni Luna Montealegre,
SF/Fantasy Poetry collection (32 poems)
B.S. 1967 in Physics and Astronomy, University of Maryland;
MFA in English 1975 University of Iowa;
Associate Professor of Writing Program 1983-87, M.I.T.; served with U.S. Army 1967-69, decorated Purple Heart; recipient Hugo Award 1976, 1977; Nebula Award 1975; Lifetime Active Member of Science Fiction Writers of America, Authors Guild, Poets & Writers Inc.
BEYOND THE FIELDS WE KNOW: Tolkien's magical world unconnected to ours
Beyond Tolkein's literary sources, it is important to understand the "open source" nature of the collaborative environment he had with "The Inklings" (including C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams). Also, it is crucial to know his literary software development methodology, which he called "subcreation." I believe that many deep software projects are examples of "subcreation" --including all Role Playing Games, much literary hypertext, and the sense in which any coder is a god-like subcreator of an complete, consistent, imaginary yet interactive world.
"Beyond the Fields We Know" is a haunting phrase by Lord Dunsany.
This is (as Baird Searles, Beth Meacham, and Michael Franklin point out ["A Reader's Guide to Fantasy", New York: Avon, 1982] a fine description of tales in which all the action happens in a magical world unconnected to our own by space or time. "The Lord of the Rings", by J. R. R. Tolkein, is a superb example. Tolkein said that the author of such fiction is engaged in "subcreation" of the other world, with an inner consistency and conviction:
"To experience directly a Secondary World, the potion is too strong, and you give to it Primary Belief, however marvellous the events. You are deluded -- whether that is the intention of the elves (always or at any time) is another question. They at any rate are not deluded. This is for them a form of Art, and distinct from Wizardry or Magic, properly so called" [J. R. R. Tolkien, "On Fairy Stories", in "Tree and Leaf", 1964].
David Hartwell [Age of Wonders, New York: Walker, 1984, p.14] summarizes this genre as "Tolkienesque fantasy, in the manner of Lord of the Rings -- carefully constructed worlds as the setting for a heroic quest."
Here we mean tales of a world sufficient unto itself, with its own history, geography, cultures, races, and nonhuman beings. There is a greater or lesser degree of magic, sometimes central to the action, sometimes part of
the taken-for-granted background, but always as something distinguishing this world from our technological one.
When we read such fiction, we feel ourselves drawn into the other world, and taking it as real, so that when we close the book, it is hard to wrench ourselves away from that world and reluctantly return to home. To capture the dream, we read the book again, or perhaps look for others that will produce the same magical emotion. Beowulf and the Icelandic Sagas certainly qualify.
For a list of 90+ such books, see my web page (from which this posting is drawn):
http://magicdragon.com/
then click on "Science Fiction", then
"Genres", then "Beyond the Fields We Know."
"Me Human, You Alien: How to Talk to an Extraterrestrial" by Jonathan Vos Post (c) 1996 by Emerald City Publishing an excerpt from a book entitled MAKING CONTACT: A SERIOUS HANDBOOK FOR LOCATING AND COMMUNICATING WITH EXTRATERRESTRIALS, edited by Bill Fawcett, July 1997, New York: William Morrow & Co. http://www.magicdragon.com/EmeraldCity/extraterres trials/alien.html
This has original ideas on how you, personally, should best prepare to communicate with ETs, including what to carry in your pockets. It also has the best review of Science Fiction approaches to the concept, as well as anthropology and linguistics.
Planets, moons, and comets also have cubic kilometers of ice from which to build neutrino telescopes. I was the first to conceive of this, and publish technical details in such
l ic ations/Mercury_Ice.html
... giving us
places as:
"HUMAN AND ROBOTIC PRECURSOR MISSIONS
TO THE POLAR ICECAPS OF MERCURY"
http://magicdragon.com/ComputerFutures/SpacePub
and
Jonathan V. Post, "Lunar Farside,
Mars Polar Cap, and Mercury Polar Cap
Neutrino Experiments", Proceedings of
Space 92 (3rd International Conference
on Engineering, Construction and
Operations in Space), pp. 2252-2263, ed.
Willy H. Sadeh, Stein Sture, Russell J.
Miller, 31 May - 4 June 1992, Denver,
CO, American Society of Civil
Engineers, New York [1st published
proposal for robotic & human missions
to icy poles of Mercury]
The south pole of Mars (water plus dry ice) is one other place where we can do this
a good baseline for "binocular vision" between Earth-based and planet-based neutrino telescopes.
We can also use undergound tanks of oxygen and hydrogen beneath a Moon Base, where the fuel and human consumable storage does double duty as a science instrument.
Think big! The solar system is ours to hack!
True, it's only the story of the day/week/month
if it turns out to be true, which is a long shot.
But any meteorite from the asteroid belt to Earth
is, by definition, a very long shot anyway...
Now about the impact turning Sodom and Gomorrah into Ground Zero, and Lot's wife turning around (against orders) to view the impact fireball and being transmogrified...
Now, what's the chemistry for turning into a
piller of salt from watching a meteorite impact?
And are Middle Eastern Genii (Genies, Jinns) actually the ghosts of aliens, as in the computer-animated feature film "Final Fantasy?"
This thread misses the point: Science Fiction
t ml
literature is a highly distributed content creation/distribution
system, with roughly 10,000 authors. The system
will stand the test of time precisely because of
network economy and the quality of content.
Time for p2p with micropayments to those authors?
See my little web site:
http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/authors.h
An annotated list of 3,284 links; also some brief
notes on 6,108 authors and pseudonyms NOT on the Internet, for a total of
9,392 authors' hotlinks or names or pseudonyms or notes.
This is arguably the largest on-line encyclopedia of science fiction
authors (which includes copious external hotlinks and e-mail links) known
to exist. Total length exceeds 3.7 Megabytes of text. It includes over
1,550 non-biographical encyclopedia entries on Fantasy and Science Fiction
terms. There are many other bibliographic websites (typically lacking
external hotlinks), and they are referenced.
The parent domain http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/
slices that distributed system by chronology, theme,
country, and other dimensions.
This thread misses the point: Science Fiction
literature is a highly distributed content creation/distribution system, with roughly 10,000 authors. The system (not some sample of 5 authors) will stand the test of time precisely because of network economy and the quality of content. Time for p2p with micropayments to those authors?
See my little web site:
An annotated list of 3,284 links, also some brief notes on 6,108 authors and pseudonyms NOT on the Internet, for a total of 9,392 authors' hotlinks or names or pseudonyms or notes.
This is arguably the largest on-line encyclopedia of science fiction authors (which includes copious external hotlinks and e-mail links) known to exist. Total length exceeds 3.7 Megabytes of text. It includes over 1,550 non-biographical encyclopedia entries on Fantasy and Science Fiction terms. There are many other bibliographic websites (typically lacking external hotlinks), and they are referenced.
The parent domain
slices that distributed system by chronology, theme, country, and other dimensions.
I have plenty of favorite authors -- after all, my co-authors and co-editors include Asimov, Bradbury, Brin, Clarke, Feynman, Heinlein,
Sturgeon, L. Sprague de Camp and others -- but it is the SYSTEM, the culture of science fiction, that must be seen as an integrated whole.
Feynman was a mentor of mine (back when
I arrived at Caltech in 1968 on full scholarship at age 16 to study physics) and I actually co-authored a published and anthologized Science poem
with Feynman. He was the acknowledged Great Grandfather of Nanotechnology, I was one of the many grandfathers of Nanotechnology, having done my doctoral dissertation on it (I called it "molecular cybernetics" in 1975-77), before Eric Drexler (the acknowledged father of nanotechnology). I got in contact with Drexler in 1979, when I was at Boeing's Kent Space Center, through our mutual friend Ray Sperber. Drexler insisted that none of us would publish until we thrashed out the safety issues. Then he jumped the gun and published first -- a good article in the NY Academy of Sciences. I'd already gotten Omni magazine (where I'd had 2 cover stories published, including the one that coined the phrase "Cybernetic War" in May 1979)hot to write about Nanotechnology. Then I introduced Eric to Stanley Schmidt, Ph.D., editor of Analog, who gave Eric important early support in the Science Fiction Community. I wish I'd published first, but maybe Eric was right to ask for a period of silence. I did, later, publish key chapters of my Nanotech dissertation in the proceedings of international conferences, and in refereed journals, but Mrs. Drexler (C. Peterson) is more involved in assering her husband's primacy in the field than in maintaining objective historiography. Be that as it may.... Now the Schrodinger's Cat is out of the Bagh, dad!
Check out my weird-but-true article
"Fat Slobs in Space."
URL is:
http://magicdragon.com/ComputerFutures/
SpacePublications/Food.html
I've worked with the Space program many years...
"... First of all, being seriously overweight might just be the best way to avoid the motion sickness that plagues a third of astronauts in orbit.... if you are grossly obese, we cannot get you sick."
Check out my weird-but-true article
"Fat Slobs in Space."
I've worked with the Space program many years...
"... First of all, being seriously overweight might just be the best way to avoid the motion sickness that plagues a third of astronauts in orbit.... if you are grossly obese, we cannot get you sick."
I co-edited the definitive book on the subject, with the listed editors ARTHUR C. CLARKE and DAVID BRIN. The title was "Project Solar Sail", and there are still about 75,000 used copies of the paperback out there in North America... The book, published by the ROC division of New American Library, had a selection of fiction about Solar Sails -- from some famous authors -- plus new nonfiction, illustrations, and short version of a longer poem on the subject which I coauthored with Ray Bradbury. It is listed on Amazon, with rave reviews... The time for Solar Sailing has come... As Clarke says, for most of the long history (including the future) of humanity, "ship" will more often mean vessels in space than vessels in water...