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Santorini (novel)
''Santorini'' is the final novel by Scottish author Alistair MacLean, first published in 1986. The book was a best seller.BEST SELLERS: APRIL 5, 1987: istNew York Times5 Apr 1987: A.40 Plot introduction While on station in the Aegean Sea under the guise of a hydrographic survey mission, the crew of Royal Navy electronic intelligence vessel HMS ''Ariadne'' witnesses two disasters at once, a mysterious strategic bomber crashing into the sea and a large pleasure yacht on fire and sinking. The plane turns out to have been loaded with nuclear weapons, and the survivors rescued from the yacht (who include a wealthy Greek tycoon) appear somehow connected with the plane's destruction. With potential saboteurs aboard, Commander Talbot and the crew of the ''Ariadne'' must raise the one activated weapon before it can explode, setting off the others by sympathetic detonation and causing the nearby volcano of Santorini to explode in a tremendous eruption which would bring on a devastating ts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alistair MacLean
Alistair Stuart MacLean ( gd, Alasdair MacGill-Eain; 21 April 1922 – 2 February 1987) was a 20th-century List of Scottish novelists, Scottish novelist who wrote popular Thriller (genre), thrillers and adventure stories. Many of his novels have been adapted to film, most notably ''The Guns of Navarone (novel), The Guns of Navarone'' (1957) and ''Ice Station Zebra (novel), Ice Station Zebra'' (1963). In the late 1960s, encouraged by film producer Elliott Kastner, MacLean began to write original screenplays, concurrently with an accompanying novel. The most successful was the first of these, the 1968 film ''Where Eagles Dare'', which was also a bestselling novel. MacLean also published two novels under the pseudonym Ian Stuart. His books are estimated to have sold over 150 million copies, making him one of the List of best-selling fiction authors, best-selling fiction authors of all time. According to one obituary, "he never lost his love for the sea, his talent for portraying go ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thriller (genre)
Thriller is a genre of fiction, having numerous, often overlapping subgenres. Thrillers are characterized and defined by the moods they elicit, giving viewers heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation and anxiety. Successful examples of thrillers are the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Thrillers generally keep the audience on the "edge of their seats" as the plot builds towards a climax. The cover-up of important information is a common element. Literary devices such as red herrings, plot twists, unreliable narrators, and cliffhangers are used extensively. A thriller is often a villain-driven plot, whereby they present obstacles that the protagonist must overcome. The most common genres that overlap with the thriller genre include crime, horror and detective fiction. Characteristics Writer Vladimir Nabokov, in his lectures at Cornell University, said: In an Anglo-Saxon thriller, the villain is generally punished, and the strong silent man ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Collins, Sons
William Collins, Sons (often referred to as Collins) was a Scottish printing and publishing company founded by a Presbyterian schoolmaster, William Collins, in Glasgow in 1819, in partnership with Charles Chalmers, the younger brother of Thomas Chalmers, minister of Tron Church, Glasgow. Collins merged with Harper & Row in 1990, forming a new publisher named HarperCollins. History The company had to overcome many early obstacles, and Charles Chalmers left the business in 1825. The company eventually found success in 1841 as a printer of Bibles, and, in 1848, Collins's son Sir William Collins developed the firm as a publishing venture, specialising in religious and educational books. The company was renamed William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd. in 1868. (The Library of Congress reports W. Collins & Co., or William Collins & Company, Collins & Co., etc., before "sometime in the 1860s", then "William Collins Sons and Co.") Although the early emphasis of the company had been o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Doubleday (publisher)
Doubleday is an American publishing company. It was founded as the Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897 and was the largest in the United States by 1947. It published the work of mostly U.S. authors under a number of imprints and distributed them through its own stores. In 2009 Doubleday merged with Alfred A. Knopf, Knopf Publishing Group to form the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, which is now part of Penguin Random House. In 2019, the official website presents Doubleday as an Imprint (trade name), imprint, not a publisher. History The firm was founded as Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897 by Frank Nelson Doubleday in partnership with Samuel Sidney McClure. McClure had founded the first U.S. newspaper syndicate in 1884 (McClure Syndicate) and the monthly ''McClure's Magazine'' in 1893. One of their first bestsellers was ''The Day's Work'' by Rudyard Kipling, a short story collection that Macmillan published in Britain late in 1898. Other authors published by the company in i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Andreas (novel)
''San Andreas'' is a novel by Scottish author Alistair MacLean, first published in 1984. One of his final novels, it returns to MacLean's original (and most successful) genre, naval warfare. Synopsis The British Merchant Navy hospital ship ''San Andreas'' is en route from Murmansk to Halifax, Nova Scotia during World War II. With large red crosses painted on the sides of its hull, ''San Andreas'' should have immunity from attack from all sides in the war and be granted safe passage. The first sign of trouble occurs when the ship's lights mysteriously fail just before a pre-dawn bombing attack that severely damages its superstructure and sinks its escort frigate. With most of the senior officers dead and the captain incapacitated, Bosun Archie McKinnon must take charge of the damaged ship and steer her to safety despite German aircraft, U-boats, stormy Arctic weather and sabotage by an unknown traitor on board. He must also discover the reason for the repeated German attempts t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1986 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1986. Events * April 29 – A major fire at Los Angeles Public Library caused by arson destroys 400,000 volumes. * July 21 – Michael Grade, Controller of BBC1, axes plans to televise Ian Curteis's '' The Falklands Play''. * September 29 – Bloomsbury Publishing is set up in London by Nigel Newton. * October 9 – '' The Phantom of the Opera'', having been the longest running Broadway show ever, opens at Her Majesty's Theatre in London. * December 19 – The Soviet dissident author Andrei Sakharov is allowed to return to Moscow after six years' internal exile. New books Fiction *Kingsley Amis – ''The Old Devils'' *V. C. Andrews – ''Garden of Shadows'' * Piers Anthony – ''Ghost'' *Jeffrey Archer – ''A Matter of Honour'' * James Axler – '' Pilgrimage to Hell'' and '' Red Holocaust'' * Iain Banks – ''The Bridge'' * Thomas Bernhard – ''Extinction'' (''Auslöschung'') *Azouz Begag – ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aegean Sea
The Aegean Sea ; tr, Ege Denizi (Greek: Αιγαίο Πέλαγος: "Egéo Pélagos", Turkish: "Ege Denizi" or "Adalar Denizi") is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans and Anatolia, and covers an area of some 215,000 square kilometres. In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea and the Black Sea by the straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. The Aegean Islands are located within the sea and some bound it on its southern periphery, including Crete and Rhodes. The sea reaches a maximum depth of 2,639m to the west of Karpathos. The Thracian Sea and the Sea of Crete are main subdivisions of the Aegean Sea. The Aegean Islands can be divided into several island groups, including the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, the Sporades, the Saronic islands and the North Aegean Islands, as well as Crete and its surrounding islands. The Dodecanese, located to the southeast, includes the islands of R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hydrographic Survey
Hydrographic survey is the science of measurement and description of features which affect maritime navigation, marine construction, dredging, offshore oil exploration/ offshore oil drilling and related activities. Strong emphasis is placed on soundings, shorelines, tides, currents, seabed and submerged obstructions that relate to the previously mentioned activities. The term ''hydrography'' is used synonymously to describe ''maritime cartography'', which in the final stages of the hydrographic process uses the raw data collected through hydrographic survey into information usable by the end user. Hydrography is collected under rules which vary depending on the acceptance authority. Traditionally conducted by ships with a sounding line or echo sounding, surveys are increasingly conducted with the aid of aircraft and sophisticated electronic sensor systems in shallow waters. Organizations National and International Maritime Hydrography Hydrographic offices evolved fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by Kingdom of England, English and Kingdom of Scotland, Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against Kingdom of France, France. The modern Royal Navy traces its origins to the early 16th century; the oldest of the British Armed Forces, UK's armed services, it is consequently known as the Senior Service. From the middle decades of the 17th century, and through the 18th century, the Royal Navy vied with the Dutch Navy and later with the French Navy for maritime supremacy. From the mid 18th century, it was the world's most powerful navy until the World War II, Second World War. The Royal Navy played a key part in establishing and defending the British Empire, and four Imperial fortress colonies and a string of imperial bases and coaling stations secured the Royal Navy's ability to assert naval superiority ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Strategic Bomber
A strategic bomber is a medium- to long-range penetration bomber aircraft designed to drop large amounts of air-to-ground weaponry onto a distant target for the purposes of debilitating the enemy's capacity to wage war. Unlike tactical bombers, penetrators, fighter-bombers, and attack aircraft, which are used in air interdiction operations to attack enemy combatants and military equipment, strategic bombers are designed to fly into enemy territory to destroy strategic targets (e.g., infrastructure, logistics, military installations, factories, etc.). In addition to strategic bombing, strategic bombers can be used for tactical missions. There are currently only three countries that operate strategic bombers: the United States, Russia and China. The modern strategic bomber role appeared after strategic bombing was widely employed, and atomic bombs were first used in combat during World War II. Nuclear strike missions (i.e., delivering nuclear-armed missiles or bombs) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sympathetic Detonation
A sympathetic detonation (SD, or SYDET), also called flash over or secondary/secondaries (explosion), is a detonation, usually unintended, of an explosive charge by a nearby explosion. Definition A sympathetic detonation is caused by a shock wave, or impact of primary or secondary blast fragments. The initiating explosive is called the donor explosive, the initiated one is known as the receptor explosive. In case of a chain detonation, a receptor explosive can become a donor one. The shock sensitivity, also called gap sensitivity, which influences the susceptibility to sympathetic detonations, can be measured by gap tests. If detonators with primary explosives are used, the shock wave of the initiating blast may set off the detonator and the attached charge. However even relatively insensitive explosives can be set off if their shock sensitivity is sufficient. Depending on the location, the shock wave can be transported by air, ground, or water. The process is probabili ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Santorini
Santorini ( el, Σαντορίνη, ), officially Thira (Greek: Θήρα ) and classical Greek Thera ( English pronunciation ), is an island in the southern Aegean Sea, about 200 km (120 mi) southeast from the Greek mainland. It is the largest island of a small circular archipelago, which bears the same name and is the remnant of a caldera. It forms the southernmost member of the Cyclades group of islands, with an area of approximately 73 km2 (28 sq mi) and a 2011 census population of 15,550. The municipality of Santorini includes the inhabited islands of Santorini and Therasia, as well as the uninhabited islands of Nea Kameni, Palaia Kameni, Aspronisi and Christiana. The total land area is 90.623 km2 (34.990 sq mi). Santorini is part of the Thira regional unit. The island was the site of one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history: the Minoan eruption (sometimes called the Thera eruption), which occurred about 3,60 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
