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Commitment Hour
''Commitment Hour'' is a science fiction novel by Canadian writer James Alan Gardner, published in 1998. The novel is set in Gardner's " League of Peoples's" futuristic universe, and plays out in the small, isolated village of Tober Cove. Set on post-apocalyptic Earth, Tober Cove most resembles a rural, seventeenth century fishing village, with one exception: every year, everyone below the age of 21 changes gender. At the age of twenty-one, the people of the village must "commit" to being male, female or both in the form of a Hermaphrodite (a 'Neut'), forever. ''Commitment Hour'' follows the day leading up to the main character's hour of commitment. Tober Cove's society revolves around gender. Dualistic in structure, there is a matriarch and a patriarch, both of whom command equal - but different - power within the community. The patriarch is the head of the city council and the military, which also serves as the town's police force. The matriarch runs the town's health services ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Alan Gardner
James Alan Gardner (born January 10, 1955) is a Canadian science fiction author. Raised in Simcoe and Bradford, Ontario, he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. Gardner has published science fiction short stories in a range of periodicals, including ''The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction'' and ''Amazing Stories''. In 1989, his short story "The Children of Creche" was awarded the Grand Prize in the Writers of the Future contest. Two years later his story "Muffin Explains Teleology to the World at Large" won a Prix Aurora Award; another story, "Three Hearings on the Existence of Snakes in the Human Bloodstream," won an Aurora and was nominated for both the Nebula and Hugo Awards. He has written a number of novels in a " League of Peoples" universe in which murderers are defined as "dangerous non-sentients" and are killed if they try to leave their solar system by aliens who are so advanced that they think of humans l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SF Site
SF may refer to: Locations * San Francisco, California, United States * Sidi Fredj, Algeria * South Florida, an urban region in the United States * Suomi Finland, former vehicular country code for Finland In arts and entertainment Genres * Speculative fiction (usually ''sf'') ** Science fiction or sci-fi (usually ''SF'') In film and television * , the Swedish film industry ** SF Film Finland, a Finnish film distributor * SF Channel (Australia) * , a German-language television network in Switzerland * , a Finnish film production company In music * Sforzando (musical direction) or sf, a musical accent * ''Subito forte'', a musical notation for dynamics (music) * Switchfoot, a band * Sasha Fierce, on-stage alter ego of American entertainer Beyoncé, and namesake of her album '' I Am... Sasha Fierce'' Other media * Saikoro Fiction, a Japanese role-playing game system * ''Street Fighter'', a series of fighting video games by Capcom Businesses and organizations I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels Set In The 25th Century
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the histori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Post-apocalyptic Novels
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which the Earth's (or another planet's) civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change; astronomical, such as an impact event; destructive, such as nuclear holocaust or resource depletion; medical, such as a pandemic, whether natural or human-caused; end time, such as the Last Judgment, Second Coming or Ragnarök; or more imaginative, such as a zombie apocalypse, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics or alien invasion. The story may involve attempts to prevent an apocalypse event, deal with the impact and consequences of the event itself, or it may be post-apocalyptic, set after the event. The time may be directly after the catastrophe, focusing on the psychology of survivors, the way to keep the human race alive and together as one, or considerably later, often including that the existence of pre-catastrophe civ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels By James Alan Gardner
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1998 Science Fiction Novels
1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently shadowed craters near the Moon's poles. * January 11 – Over 100 people are killed in the Sidi-Hamed massacre in Algeria. * January 12 – Nineteen European nations agree to forbid human cloning. * January 17 – The ''Drudge Report'' breaks the story about U.S. President Bill Clinton's alleged affair with Monica Lewinsky, which will lead to the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives' impeachment of him. February * February 3 – Cavalese cable car disaster (1998), Cavalese cable car disaster: A United States military pilot causes the deaths of 20 people near Trento, Italy, when his low-flying EA-6B Prowler severs the cable of a cable-car. * February 4 – The 5.9 February 1998 Afghanistan earthquake, Afghanistan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1998 Canadian Novels
1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The '' Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently shadowed craters near the Moon's poles. * January 11 – Over 100 people are killed in the Sidi-Hamed massacre in Algeria. * January 12 – Nineteen European nations agree to forbid human cloning. * January 17 – The ''Drudge Report'' breaks the story about U.S. President Bill Clinton's alleged affair with Monica Lewinsky, which will lead to the House of Representatives' impeachment of him. February * February 3 – Cavalese cable car disaster: A United States military pilot causes the deaths of 20 people near Trento, Italy, when his low-flying EA-6B Prowler severs the cable of a cable-car. * February 4 – The 5.9 Afghanistan earthquake shakes the Takhar Province with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII (''Very strong''). With up ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sex And Sexuality In Speculative Fiction
Sexual themes are frequently used in science fiction or related genres. Such elements may include depictions of realistic sexual interactions in a science fictional setting, a protagonist with an alternative sexuality, a sexual encounter between a human and a fictional extraterrestrial, or exploration of the varieties of sexual experience that deviate from the conventional. Science fiction and fantasy have sometimes been more constrained than non-genre narrative forms in their depictions of sexuality and gender. However, speculative fiction (SF) and soft science fiction also offers the freedom to imagine alien or galactic societies different from real-life cultures, making it a tool to examine sexual bias, heteronormativity, and gender bias and enabling the reader to reconsider their cultural assumptions. Prior to the 1960s, explicit sexuality of any kind was not characteristic of genre speculative fiction due to the relatively high number of minors in the target audi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of Book Publishing and Bookselling". With 51 issues a year, the emphasis today is on book reviews. The magazine was founded by bibliographer Frederick Leypoldt in the late 1860s, and had various titles until Leypoldt settled on the name ''The Publishers' Weekly'' (with an apostrophe) in 1872. The publication was a compilation of information about newly published books, collected from publishers and from other sources by Leypoldt, for an audience of booksellers. By 1876, ''The Publishers' Weekly'' was being read by nine tenths of the booksellers in the country. In 1878, Leypoldt sold ''The Publishers' Weekly'' to his friend Richard Rogers Bowker, in order to free up time for his other bibliographic endeavors. Eventually the publication expand ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stock Character
A stock character, also known as a character archetype, is a fictional character in a work of art such as a novel, play, or a film whom audiences recognize from frequent recurrences in a particular literary tradition. There is a wide range of stock characters, covering men and women of various ages, social classes and demeanors. They are archetypal characters distinguished by their simplification and flatness. As a result, they tend to be easy targets for parody and to be criticized as clichés. The presence of a particular array of stock characters is a key component of many genres, and they often help to identify a genre or subgenre. For example, a story with a knight-errant and a witch is probably a fairy tale or fantasy. There are several purposes to using stock characters. Stock characters are a time- and effort-saving shortcut for story creators, as authors can populate their tale with existing well-known character types. Another benefit is that stock characters help to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Left Hand Of Darkness
''The Left Hand of Darkness'' is a science fiction novel by U.S. writer Ursula K. Le Guin. Published in 1969, it became immensely popular, and established Le Guin's status as a major author of science fiction. The novel is set in the fictional Hainish universe as part of the '' Hainish Cycle'', a series of novels and short stories by Le Guin, which she introduced in the 1964 short story " The Dowry of Angyar". It was fourth in sequence of writing among the Hainish novels, preceded by '' City of Illusions'', and followed by '' The Word for World Is Forest''. The novel follows the story of Genly Ai, a human native of Terra, who is sent to the planet of Gethen as an envoy of the Ekumen, a loose confederation of planets. Ai's mission is to persuade the nations of Gethen to join the Ekumen, but he is stymied by a lack of understanding of their culture. Individuals on Gethen are ''ambisexual'', with no fixed sex; this has a strong influence on the culture of the planet, and creates ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ursula K
Ursula may refer to: * Ursula (name), feminine name and a list of people and fictional characters with the name * ''Ursula'' (album), an album by American jazz pianist Mal Waldron *Ursula (crater), a crater on Titania, a moon of Uranus *Ursula (detention center), processing facility for unaccompanied minors in McAllen, Texas *Ursula (The Little Mermaid), a fictional character who appears in ''The Little Mermaid'' (1989) *Ursula Channel, body of water in British Columbia, Canada *375 Ursula, a large main-belt asteroid * HMS ''Ursula'', a destroyer and two submarines that served with the Royal Navy *Tropical Storm Ursula (other), a typhoon, two cyclones, and a tropical depression, all in the Pacific Ocean * Ursula, signals intelligence system used by the Finnish Defence Intelligence Agency See also *Saint Ursula Saint Ursula (Latin for 'little female bear', german: link=no, Heilige Ursula) is a legendary Romano-British Christian saint who died on 21 October 383. Her ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
