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Uplift (science Fiction)
In science fiction, uplift is the intervention in the evolution of species of low-intelligence or even non sentient species in order to increase their intelligence. This is usually accomplished by cultural, technological, or evolutionary interventions such as genetic engineering. The earliest appearance of the concept is in H. G. Wells's 1896 novel ''The Island of Doctor Moreau''. The term was popularized by David Brin in his ''Uplift'' series in the 1980s. History The concept of uplift can be traced to H. G. Wells's 1896 novel ''The Island of Doctor Moreau'', in which the titular scientist transforms animals into horrifying parodies of humans through surgery and psychological torment. The resulting animal-people obsessively recite the Law, a series of prohibitions against a reversion to animal behaviors, with the haunting refrain of "Are we not men?". Wells's novel reflects Victorian concerns about vivisection and of the power of unrestrained scientific experimentation to do te ... [...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] |
Planet Of The Apes (novel)
''La Planète des singes'', published in English as ''Planet of the Apes'' in the U.S. and ''Monkey Planet'' in the UK, is a 1963 science fiction novel by French author Pierre Boulle. It was adapted into the 1968 film ''Planet of the Apes'', launching the ''Planet of the Apes'' media franchise. The novel tells the tale of three human explorers from Earth who visit a planet orbiting the star Betelgeuse, in which great apes are the dominant intelligent and civilized species, whereas humans are reduced to a savage animal-like state. Plot In a frame story, a rich couple sailing in space, Jinn and Phyllis, rescue and translate a manuscript from a floating bottle. The manuscript was written by Ulysse Mérou, a French journalist who, in 2500, was invited by Professor Antelle to accompany him and his disciple, physician Arthur Levain, to Betelgeuse. Because of time dilation, centuries pass on Earth during their two years in transit. They land their shuttle on a temperate, lushly forest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Boulle
Pierre François Marie Louis Boulle (20 February 1912 – 30 January 1994) was a French author. He is best known for two works, '' The Bridge over the River Kwai'' (1952) and '' Planet of the Apes'' (1963), that were both made into award-winning films. Boulle was an engineer serving as a secret agent with the Free French in Singapore, when he was captured and subjected to two years' forced labour. He used these experiences in ''The Bridge over the River Kwai'', about the notorious Death Railway, which became an international bestseller. The film, named '' The Bridge on the River Kwai'', by David Lean won seven Academy Awards (including Best Adapted Screenplay), and Boulle was credited with writing the screenplay, because its two actual screenwriters had been blacklisted. His science-fiction novel ''Planet of the Apes'', in which intelligent apes gain mastery over humans, developed into a media franchise spanning over 55 years that includes ten films, two television series, co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foil (narrative)
In any narrative, a foil is a character who contrasts with another character, typically, a character who contrasts with the protagonist, in order to better highlight or differentiate certain qualities of the protagonist. A foil to the protagonist may also be the antagonist of the plot. In some cases, a subplot can be used as a foil to the main plot. This is especially true in the case of metafiction and the "story within a story" motif. A foil usually either differs dramatically or is an extreme comparison that is made to contrast a difference between two things. Thomas F. Gieryn places these uses of literary foils into three categories, which Tamara A. P. Metze explains as: those that emphasize the ''heightened contrast'' (this is different because ...), those that operate by ''exclusion'' (this is not X because...), and those that assign ''blame'' ("due to the slow decision-making procedures of government..."). Etymology The word ''foil'' comes from the old practice of back ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heart Of Darkness
''Heart of Darkness'' is an 1899 novella by Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad in which the sailor Charles Marlow tells his listeners the story of his assignment as steamer captain for a Belgium, Belgian company in the African interior. The novel is widely regarded as a critique of Scramble for Africa, European colonial rule in Africa, whilst also examining the themes of power dynamics and morality. Although Conrad does not name the river on which most of the narrative takes place, at the time of writing, the Congo Free State—the location of the large and economically important Congo River—was a private colony of Belgium's Leopold II of Belgium, King Leopold II. Marlow is given an assignment to find Kurtz (Heart of Darkness), Kurtz, an ivory trader working on a trading station far up the river, who has "gone native" and is the object of Marlow's expedition. Central to Conrad's work is the idea that there is little difference between "civilised people" and "savages". ''H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, ; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Poles in the United Kingdom#19th century, Polish-British novelist and story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language and – though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties (always with a strong foreign accent) – became a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. He wrote novels and stories, many in nautical settings, that depicted crises of human individuality in the midst of what he saw as an indifferent, inscrutable, and amoral world. Conrad is considered a Impressionism (literature), literary impressionist by some and an early Literary modernism, modernist by others, though his works also contain elements of 19th-century Literary realism, realism. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters, as in ''Lord Jim'', have influenced numerous authors. Many dramatic films have been ada ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Downward To The Earth
''Downward to the Earth'' is a 1970 science fiction novel by American writer Robert Silverberg. It is a tale of the quest for transcendence (a frequent Silverberg theme) set on another planet, and includes references to ''Heart of Darkness'', Joseph Conrad's classic tale of colonialism, including the name of Kurtz. Its title references Ecclesiastes 3:21 in the Bible ("''Who knows if the spirit of people rises upward and the spirit of animals goes downward to the earth?''"). ''Downward to the Earth'' was originally published as a four-part serial publication, starting in the November 1969 edition of ''Galaxy Science Fiction''. It was nominated for a Locus Award in 1971. Plot summary Edmund Gunderson was the Terran administrator of the colony world of Belzagor, and he returns to it after it has gained independence, feeling a sense of guilt for the way he has treated its dominant species, the elephant Elephants are the largest living land animals. Three living spe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Silverberg
Robert Silverberg (born January 15, 1935) is a prolific American science fiction author and editor. He is a multiple winner of both Hugo Award, Hugo and Nebula Awards, a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, and a SFWA Grand Master, Grand Master of SF since 2004. Especially noted Silverberg works include the novella ''Nightwings (novella), Nightwings'' (1969) and the novels ''Downward to the Earth'' (1970), ''The World Inside'' (1971), ''Dying Inside'' (1972), and ''Lord Valentine's Castle'' (1980; the first of the Majipoor series). Silverberg has attended every Hugo Award ceremony since the inaugural event in 1953. Biography Early life Silverberg was born on January 15, 1935, to Jew, Jewish parents in Brooklyn, New York. A voracious reader since childhood, he began submitting stories to science fiction magazines during his early teenage years. He received a BA in English Literature from Columbia University, in 1956. While at Columbia he wrote the juvenile ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colonialism
Colonialism is the control of another territory, natural resources and people by a foreign group. Colonizers control the political and tribal power of the colonised territory. While frequently an Imperialism, imperialist project, colonialism can also take the form of settler colonialism, whereby settlers from one or multiple colonizing metropoles occupy a territory with the intention of partially or completely supplanting the existing population. Colonialism developed as a concept describing European colonial empires of the modern era, which spread globally from the 15th century to the mid-20th century, spanning 35% of Earth's land by 1800 and peaking at 84% by the beginning of World War I. European colonialism employed mercantilism and Chartered company, chartered companies, and established Coloniality of power, coloniality, which keeps the colonized socio-economically Other (philosophy), othered and Subaltern (postcolonialism), subaltern through modern biopolitics of Heterono ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
White Man's Burden
"The White Man's Burden" (1899), by Rudyard Kipling, is a poem about the Philippine–American War (1899–1902) that exhorts the United States to assume colonial control of the Filipino people and their country.'' In "The White Man's Burden", Kipling encouraged the American annexation and colonisation of the Philippine Islands, a Pacific Ocean archipelago purchased in the three-month Spanish–American War (1898). As an imperialist poet, Kipling exhorts the American reader and listener to take up the enterprise of empire yet warns about the personal costs faced, endured, and paid in building an empire; nonetheless, American imperialists understood the phrase "the white man's burden" to justify imperial conquest as a civilising mission that is ideologically related to the continental expansion philosophy of manifest destiny of the early 19th century. With a central motif of the poem being the superiority of white men, it has long been criticised as a racist poem. History ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allegory
As a List of narrative techniques, literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a wikt:narrative, narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory throughout history in all forms of art to illustrate or convey complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible or striking to its viewers, readers, or listeners. Writers and speakers typically use allegories to convey (semi-) hidden or complex meanings through symbolism (arts), symbolic figures, actions, imagery, or events, which together create the moral, spiritual, or political meaning the author wishes to convey. Many allegories use personification of abstract concepts. Etymology First attested in English in 1382, the word ''allegory'' comes from Latin ''allegoria'', the latinisation (literature), latinisation of the Greek language, Greek ἀλληγορία (''allegoría''), "veiled ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Startide Rising
''Startide Rising'' is a 1983 science fiction novel by American writer David Brin, the second book of six set in his Uplift Universe (preceded by '' Sundiver'' and followed by '' The Uplift War''). It earned both Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel in 1984. It was revised by the author in 1993 to correct errors and omissions from the original edition. An early work by David Brin, it was extremely well reviewed when it was published, has remained popular, and served as the seed for three more novels which revolved around the crew of the Earthship '' Streaker'' (the ''Uplift Storm Trilogy''). Parts of ''Startide Rising'' were published as "The Tides of Kithrup" in the May 1981 issue of '' Analog''. ''The Tides of Kithrup'' was an early title of the novel; uncorrected proofs of the novel that still bear that title have become collector's items. Plot summary In the year 2489 C.E., the Terran spaceship ''Streaker'' — crewed by 150 uplifted dolphins, seven humans, and one ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
