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Swan Song (Stableford Novel)
The Hooded Swan series (or Star Pilot Grainger series) is a series of science fiction novels by Brian Stableford, published in the early 1970s, beginning with ''Halcyon Drift'' (1972). It consists of six books, which have also been collected in an omnibus entitled ''Swan Songs: The Complete Hooded Swan Collection'' (2001). The series is set in the far future and possesses some of the features of space opera and planetary romance. It is narrated in the first person by the main character, Grainger, a well-known independent pilot. He is acerbic, sarcastic, and generally disagreeable on principle, attempting to keep himself isolated from others where possible. He serves as something as an unreliable narrator with respect to his own feelings and motivations. To balance this out, Stableford uses the device of an alien symbiote, referred to as the wind, who is privy to all of Grainger's thoughts and wants to make him a better person. It also calls Grainger out on some of his self- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science Fiction
Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space exploration, time travel, Parallel universes in fiction, parallel universes, and extraterrestrials in fiction, extraterrestrial life. The genre often explores human responses to the consequences of projected or imagined scientific advances. Science fiction is related to fantasy (together abbreviated wikt:SF&F, SF&F), Horror fiction, horror, and superhero fiction, and it contains many #Subgenres, subgenres. The genre's precise Definitions of science fiction, definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers. Major subgenres include hard science fiction, ''hard'' science fiction, which emphasizes scientific accuracy, and soft science fiction, ''soft'' science fiction, which focuses on social sciences. Other no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hyperspace (science Fiction)
In science fiction, hyperspace (also known as nulspace, subspace, overspace, jumpspace and similar terms) is a concept relating to dimension#Additional dimensions, higher dimensions as well as parallel universes in fiction, parallel universes and a faster-than-light (FTL) method of interstellar travel. In its original meaning, the term ''hyperspace'' was simply a synonym for higher-dimensional space. This usage was most common in 19th-century textbooks and is still occasionally found in academic and popular science texts, for example, ''Hyperspace (book), Hyperspace'' (1994).'''' Its science fiction usage originated in the magazine ''Amazing Stories Quarterly'' in 1931 and within several decades it became one of the most popular Trope (literature), tropes of science fiction, popularized by its use in the works of authors such as Isaac Asimov and Edwin Charles Tubb, E. C. Tubb, and media franchises such as ''Star Wars''. One of the main reasons for the concept's popularity in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Excommunication
Excommunication is an institutional act of religious censure used to deprive, suspend, or limit membership in a religious community or to restrict certain rights within it, in particular those of being in Koinonia, communion with other members of the congregation, and of receiving the sacraments. It is practiced by all of the ancient churches (such as the Catholic Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodox churches and the Eastern Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodox churches) as well as by other Christian denominations; however, it is also used more generally to refer to similar types of institutional religious exclusionary practices and shunning among other religious groups. The Amish have also been known to excommunicate members that were either seen or known for breaking rules, or questioning the church, a practice known as shunning. Jehovah's Witnesses use the term disfellowship to refer to their form of excommunication. The word ''excommunication'' means putting a specific indiv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Star
A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sky, night; their immense distances from Earth make them appear as fixed stars, fixed points of light. The most prominent stars have been categorised into constellations and asterism (astronomy), asterisms, and many of the brightest stars have proper names. Astronomers have assembled star catalogues that identify the known stars and provide standardized stellar designations. The observable universe contains an estimated to stars. Only about 4,000 of these stars are visible to the naked eye—all within the Milky Way galaxy. A star's life star formation, begins with the gravitational collapse of a gaseous nebula of material largely comprising hydrogen, helium, and traces of heavier elements. Its stellar mass, total mass mainly determines it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evolution
Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more or less common within a population over successive generations. The process of evolution has given rise to biodiversity at every level of biological organisation. The scientific theory of evolution by natural selection was conceived independently by two British naturalists, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, in the mid-19th century as an explanation for why organisms are adapted to their physical and biological environments. The theory was first set out in detail in Darwin's book ''On the Origin of Species''. Evolution by natural selection is established by observable facts about living organisms: (1) more offspring are often produced than can possibly survive; (2) phenotypic variatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biosphere
The biosphere (), also called the ecosphere (), is the worldwide sum of all ecosystems. It can also be termed the zone of life on the Earth. The biosphere (which is technically a spherical shell) is virtually a closed system with regard to matter,"Biosphere" in ''The Columbia Encyclopedia'', 6th ed. (2004) Columbia University Press. with minimal inputs and outputs. Regarding , it is an open system, with capturing |
Armored Vehicle
Military vehicles are commonly armoured (or armored; see spelling differences) to withstand the impact of shrapnel, bullets, shells, rockets, and missiles, protecting the personnel inside from enemy fire. Such vehicles include armoured fighting vehicles like tanks, aircraft, and ships. Civilian vehicles may also be armoured. These vehicles include cars used by officials (e.g., presidential limousines), reporters and others in conflict zones or where violent crime is common. Civilian armoured cars are also routinely used by security firms to carry money or valuables to reduce the risk of highway robbery or the hijacking of the cargo. Armour may also be used in vehicles to protect from threats other than a deliberate attack. Some spacecraft are equipped with specialised armour to protect them against impacts from micrometeoroids or fragments of space debris. Modern aircraft powered by jet engines usually have them fitted with a sort of armour in the form of an aramid compos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marine Salvage
Marine salvage is the process of recovering a ship and its cargo after a shipwreck or other maritime casualty. Salvage may encompass towing, lifting a vessel, or effecting repairs to a ship. Salvors are normally paid for their efforts. However, protecting the coastal environment from oil spillages or other Contamination, contaminants from a modern ship can also be a motivator, as oil, cargo, and other pollutants can easily leak from a wreck and in these instances, governments or authorities may organise the salvage. Before the invention of radio, salvage services would be given to a stricken vessel by any passing ship. Today, most salvage is carried out by specialist salvage firms with dedicated crews and equipment. Law of salvage, The legal significance of salvage is that a successful salvorsalvor: A person or company involved in salvage activities. is entitled to a reward, which is a proportion of the total value of the ship and its cargo. The bounty is determined subsequen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Distress Signal
A distress signal, also known as a distress call, is an internationally recognized means for obtaining help. Distress signals are communicated by transmitting radio signals, displaying a visually observable item or illumination, or making a sound audible from a distance. A distress signal indicates that a person or group of people, watercraft, aircraft, or other vehicle is threatened by a serious or imminent danger and requires immediate assistance.Aeronautical Information Manual U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, 2016 Use of distress signals in other circumstances may be against local or . An [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parasitism
Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives (at least some of the time) on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The entomologist E. O. Wilson characterised parasites' way of feeding as "predators that eat prey in units of less than one". Parasites include single-celled protozoans such as the agents of malaria, sleeping sickness, and amoebic dysentery; animals such as hookworms, lice, mosquitoes, and vampire bats; fungi such as honey fungus and the agents of ringworm; and plants such as mistletoe, dodder, and the broomrapes. There are six major parasitic strategies of exploitation of animal hosts, namely parasitic castration, directly transmitted parasitism (by contact), trophicallytransmitted parasitism (by being eaten), vector-transmitted parasitism, parasitoidism, and micropredation. One major axis of classification concerns invasiveness: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Planet
A planet is a large, Hydrostatic equilibrium, rounded Astronomical object, astronomical body that is generally required to be in orbit around a star, stellar remnant, or brown dwarf, and is not one itself. The Solar System has eight planets by the most restrictive definition of the term: the terrestrial planets Mercury (planet), Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, and the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a young protostar orbited by a protoplanetary disk. Planets grow in this disk by the gradual accumulation of material driven by gravity, a process called accretion (astrophysics), accretion. The word ''planet'' comes from the Greek () . In Classical antiquity, antiquity, this word referred to the Sun, Moon, and five points of light visible to the naked eye that moved across the background of the stars—namely, Me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
