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The Leaky Establishment
''The Leaky Establishment'' is a novel by David Langford, first published in June 1984 by Frederick Muller Ltd. It was re-issued, with an introduction by Terry Pratchett, in 2001 by Big Engine, and then July 2003 by Cosmos Books. The book draws on some of Langford's own experiences working at the United Kingdom government's Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston, Berkshire. Plot introduction Roy Tappen works for the Robinson Heath Nuclear Utilisation Technology Centre, a nuclear weapons facility in Britain. He fights bureaucracy while trying to use it for his purpose, which is to undo the potentially disastrous results of a practical joke gone wrong. Smuggling plutonium out of a nuclear research centre turns out to be surprisingly easy. The difficult part is smuggling it back in again without getting caught. References External links *The Leaky Establishment' – information on ansible.co.uk *The Leaky Establishment' – review on amazon.com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Langford
David Rowland Langford (born 10 April 1953) is a British author, editor, and Literary criticism, critic, largely active within the science fiction field. He publishes the science-fiction fanzine and newsletter ''Ansible'' and holds the all-time record for most Hugo Award, Hugo Awards, with a total of 29 wins. Personal background David Langford was born and grew up in Newport, Wales, before studying for a degree in Physics at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he first became involved in science fiction fandom. Langford is married to Hazel and is the older brother of the musician and artist Jon Langford. His first job was as a weapons physicist at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston, Berkshire from 1975 to 1980. In 1985 he set up a "tiny and informally run software company" with science fiction writer Christopher Priest (novelist), Christopher Priest, called Ansible Information after Langford's news-sheet. The company has ceased trading. Langford has worn a h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick Muller Ltd
Hutchinson Heinemann is a British publishing firm founded in 1887. It is currently an imprint which is ultimately owned by Bertelsmann, the German publishing conglomerate. History Hutchinson Heinemann began as Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., an English book publisher, founded in London in 1887 by Sir George Hutchinson and later run by his son, Walter Hutchinson (1887–1950). Hutchinson's published books and magazines such as '' The Lady's Realm'', ''Adventure-story Magazine'', ''Hutchinson's Magazine'' and ''Woman''.Ashley, M. (2006). ''The Age of Storytellers. British Popular Fiction Magazines 1880–1950''. London: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press. In the 1920s, Walter Hutchinson published many of the "spook stories" of E. F. Benson in ''Hutchinson's Magazine'' and then in collections in a number of books. The company also first published Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger novels, five novels by mystery writer Harry Stephen Keeler, and short stories by E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terry Pratchett
Sir Terence David John Pratchett (28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015) was an English author, humorist, and Satire, satirist, best known for the ''Discworld'' series of 41 comic fantasy novels published between 1983 and 2015, and for the Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, apocalyptic comedy novel ''Good Omens'' (1990), which he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman. Pratchett's first novel, ''The Carpet People'', was published in 1971. The first ''Discworld'' novel, ''The Colour of Magic'', was published in 1983, after which Pratchett wrote an average of two books a year. The final ''Discworld'' novel, ''The Shepherd's Crown'', was published in August 2015, five months after his death. With more than 100 million books sold worldwide in 43 languages, Pratchett was the UK's best-selling author of the 1990s. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1998 and was Knight Bachelor, knighted for services to literature in the 2009 New Year Honours. In 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atomic Weapons Research Establishment
} The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) is a United Kingdom Ministry of Defence research facility responsible for the design, manufacture and support of warheads for the UK's nuclear weapons. It is the successor to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) with its main site on the former RAF Aldermaston and has major facilities at Burghfield, Blacknest and RNAD Coulport. AWE plc, responsible for the day-to-day operations of AWE, is owned by the Ministry of Defence and operated as a non-departmental public body. Until June 2021, AWE plc was owned by a consortium of Jacobs Engineering Group, Lockheed Martin UK, and Serco through AWE Management Ltd, which held a 25‑year contract (until March 2025) to operate AWE, although all the sites remained owned by the Government of the United Kingdom which had a golden share in AWE plc. In November 2020, it was announced that the Ministry of Defence had triggered a contractual break point and would take ownership of AWE ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aldermaston
Aldermaston ( ) is a village and civil parish in Berkshire, England. In the 2011 census, the parish had a population of 1,015. The village is in the Kennet Valley and bounds Hampshire to the south. It is approximately from Newbury, Basingstoke, and Reading and is from London. Aldermaston may have been inhabited as early as 1690 BCE; a number of postholes and remains of cereal grains have been found in the area. Written history of the village is traced back at least as far as the 9th century CE, when the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicles'' showed that the Ealdorman of Berkshire had his country estate in the village. The manor of Aldermaston was established by the early 11th century, when the village was given to the Achard family by Henry I; the manor is documented in the Domesday Book of 1086. St Mary the Virgin Church was established in the 13th century, and some of the original Norman architecture remains in the building's structure. The last resident Lord of the Manor, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Berkshire
Berkshire ( ; abbreviated ), officially the Royal County of Berkshire, is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Oxfordshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the north-east, Greater London to the east, Surrey to the south-east, Hampshire to the south, and Wiltshire to the west. Reading, Berkshire, Reading is the largest settlement and the county town. The county has an area of and a population of 911,403. The population is concentrated in the east, the area closest to Greater London, which includes the county's largest towns: Reading (174,224), Slough (164,793), Bracknell (113,205), and Maidenhead (70,374). The west is rural, and its largest town is Newbury, Berkshire, Newbury (33,841). For local government purposes Berkshire comprises six Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority areas: Bracknell Forest, Borough of Reading, Reading, Borough of Slough, Slough, West Berkshire, Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plutonium
Plutonium is a chemical element; it has symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is a silvery-gray actinide metal that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four oxidation states. It reacts with carbon, halogens, nitrogen, silicon, and hydrogen. When exposed to moist air, it forms oxides and hydrides that can expand the sample up to 70% in volume, which in turn flake off as a powder that is pyrophoric. It is radioactive and can accumulate in bones, which makes the handling of plutonium dangerous. Plutonium was first synthesized and isolated in late 1940 and early 1941, by deuteron bombardment of uranium-238 in the cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley. First, neptunium-238 (half-life 2.1 days) was synthesized, which then beta-decayed to form the new element with atomic number 94 and atomic weight 238 (half-life 88 years). Since uranium had been named after the planet Uranus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ansible (magazine)
David Rowland Langford (born 10 April 1953) is a British author, editor, and critic, largely active within the science fiction field. He publishes the science-fiction fanzine and newsletter ''Ansible'' and holds the all-time record for most Hugo Awards, with a total of 29 wins. Personal background David Langford was born and grew up in Newport, Wales, before studying for a degree in Physics at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he first became involved in science fiction fandom. Langford is married to Hazel and is the older brother of the musician and artist Jon Langford. His first job was as a weapons physicist at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston, Berkshire from 1975 to 1980. In 1985 he set up a "tiny and informally run software company" with science fiction writer Christopher Priest, called Ansible Information after Langford's news-sheet. The company has ceased trading. Langford has worn a hearing aid since childhood, and increasing hearing difficultie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology Amazon or Amazone may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Amazon (Amalgam Comics) * Amazon, an alias of the Marvel supervillain Man-Killer * Amazons (DC Comics), a group of superhuman characters * The Amazon, a '' Diablo II'' character * The Amazon, a '' Pro Wrestling'' character * Amazon (''Dragon's Crown''), a character from the ''Dragon's Crown'' game * '' Kamen Rider Amazon'', title character in the fourth installment of the ''Kamen Rider'' series Film and television * ''The Amazons'' (1917 film), an American silent tragedy film * ''The Amazon'' (film), a 1921 German silent film * '' War Goddess'', also known as ''The Amazons'', a 1973 Italian adventure fantasy drama * ''Amazons'' (1984 f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1984 British Novels
Events January * January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888. * January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). * January 9 – Van Halen releases their sixth studio album ''1984'' (''MCMLXXXIV''), which debuts at number 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, and will go to sell over 10 million copies in the United States. * January 10 ** The United States and the Vatican (Holy See) restore full diplomatic relations. ** The Victoria Agreement is signed, institutionalising the Indian Ocean Commission. *January 24 – Steve Jobs launches the Macintosh personal computer in the United States. *January 27 – American singer Michael Jackson's hair caught on fire during the making of the Pepsi commercial. February * February 3 ** John Buster and the research team at Harbor–UCLA Medical Center announce history's first embryo trans ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
