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Hard Fantasy
Hard fantasy is a term used to describe different types of fantasy literature, especially those which present stories set in (and often centered on) a rational and knowable world. In this sense, the term is analogous to hard science fiction, from which its name is drawn, in that both build their respective worlds in a rigorous and logical manner. However, the term has other uses, and the scholar Misha Grifka-Wander has argued that it is both unpopular and inaccurate. Definition In ''The Encyclopedia of Fantasy'' (1997), Gary Westfahl defined hard fantasy as a term for stories in which "magic is regarded as an almost scientific force of nature and subject to the same sort of rules and principles", and which "might refer to fantasy stories equivalent to the form of hard sf known as the 'scientific problem' story, where the hero must logically solve a problematic magical situation". He noted that John W. Campbell promoted this kind of fantasy when he was editor of ''Unknown''. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction that involves supernatural or Magic (supernatural), magical elements, often including Fictional universe, imaginary places and Legendary creature, creatures. The genre's roots lie in oral traditions, which later became fantasy literature, fantasy literature and drama. From the twentieth century onward, it has expanded into various media, including film, television, graphic novels, manga, animation, and video games. The expression ''fantastic literature'' is often used for this genre by Anglophone literary critics. An archaic spelling for the term is ''phantasy''. Fantasy is generally distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror fiction, horror by an absence of scientific or macabre themes, although these can occur in fantasy. In popular culture, the fantasy genre predominantly features settings that reflect the actual Earth, but with some sense of otherness. Characteristics Many works of fantasy use magic (paranorma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lyndon Hardy
Lyndon Mauriece Hardy is an American physicist, fantasy author, and business owner. Biography Hardy was born April 16, 1941 in Los Angeles, the son of Leonard and Zell (Smith) Hardy. He attended the California Institute of Technology as an undergraduate and the University of California Berkeley for his Ph.D. In 1961, Hardy masterminded the Great Rose Bowl Hoax, in which Caltech students rearranged the cards used by Washington to spell out words during halftime. In his college years, he became fascinated with fantasy literature. In addition to being a fantasy author, he worked for 30 years at the aerospace company TRW, and started a computer consulting company named Alodar Systems Inc. that, among other things, helped develop intelligence tools for medical research and enterprise resource planning software for small businesses. He is married and has two daughters. Hardy is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gardner Dozois
Gardner Raymond Dozois ( ; July 23, 1947 – May 27, 2018) was an American science fiction author and editor. He was the founding editor of '' The Year's Best Science Fiction'' anthologies (1984–2018) and was editor of '' Asimov's Science Fiction'' (1986–2004), garnering multiple Hugo and Locus Awards for those works almost every year. He also won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story twice. He was inducted to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame on June 25, 2011. Biography Dozois was born July 23, 1947, in Salem, Massachusetts. He graduated from Salem High School with the Class of 1965. From 1966 to 1969 he served in the Army as a journalist, after which he moved to New York City to work as an editor in the science fiction field. One of his stories had been published by Frederik Pohl in the September 1966 issue of '' If'' but his next four appeared in 1970, three in Damon Knight's anthology series ''Orbit''. Dozois said that he turned to reading fiction partially as an e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rendezvous With Rama
''Rendezvous with Rama'' is a 1973 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. Set in the 2130s, the story involves a cylindrical alien starship that enters the Solar System. The story is told from the point of view of a group of human explorers who intercept the ship in an attempt to unlock its mysteries. The novel won both the Hugo and Nebula awards upon its release, and is regarded as one of the cornerstones in Clarke's bibliography. The concept was later extended with several sequels, written by Clarke and Gentry Lee. Plot An asteroid strikes Italy in 2077, prompting the creation of the Spaceguard system to track potentially hazardous objects in space. In 2131, Spaceguard detects an interstellar object entering the Solar System, designating it "31/439" before naming it Rama after the Hindu god. A space probe reveals that Rama is a perfectly smooth cylinder long and in diameter, indicating that it was constructed by intelligent beings. ''Endeavour'' is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Olaf Stapledon
William Olaf Stapledon (10 May 1886 – 6 September 1950) was an English philosopher and author of science fiction.Andy Sawyer, " illiamOlaf Stapledon (1886-1950)", in Bould, Mark, et al, eds. ''Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction''. New York: Routledge, 2010. (pp. 205–210) .John Kinnaird, "Stapledon,(William) Olaf" in Curtis C. Smith, '' Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers''. Chicago, St. James, 1986. (pp. 693–6). In 2014, he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. Life Stapledon was born in Seacombe, Wallasey, on the Wirral Peninsula in Cheshire, the only son of William Clibbett Stapledon and Emmeline Miller. The first six years of his life were spent with his parents at Port Said, Egypt. He was educated at Abbotsholme School in Derbyshire and Balliol College, Oxford, where he acquired a BA degree in Modern History (Second Class) in 1909, promoted to an MA degree in 1913. After a brief stint as a teacher at Manchester Grammar Schoo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne (;''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary''. ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the ''Voyages extraordinaires'', a series of bestselling adventure novels including ''Journey to the Center of the Earth'' (1864), ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas'' (1870), and ''Around the World in Eighty Days'' (1872). His novels are generally set in the second half of the 19th century, taking into account contemporary scientific knowledge and the technological advances of the time. In addition to his novels, he wrote numerous plays, short stories, autobiographical accounts, poetry, songs, and scientific, artistic and literary studies. His work has been adapted for film and television since the beginning of cinema, as well as for comic books, theater, opera, music and video games. Verne is considered to be an important author in France and most of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath
''The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath'' is a Horror fiction, horror novella by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Begun probably in the autumn of 1926, the draft was completed on January 22, 1927 in literature, 1927, and it remained unrevised and unpublished in his lifetime. It is both the longest of the stories that make up his Dream Cycle and the longest Lovecraft work to feature protagonist Randolph Carter. Along with his 1927 novel ''The Case of Charles Dexter Ward'', it can be considered one of the significant achievements of that period of Lovecraft's writing. ''The Dream-Quest'' combines elements of horror and fantasy into an epic tale that illustrates the scope and wonder of humankind's ability to dream. The story was published posthumously by Arkham House in 1943 in literature, 1943. Currently, it is published by Ballantine Books in an anthology that also includes "The Silver Key" and "Through the Gates of the Silver Key". The definitive version, with corrected text by S. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alice In Wonderland
''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (also known as ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English Children's literature, children's novel by Lewis Carroll, a mathematics university don, don at the University of Oxford. It details the story of a girl named Alice (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic creatures. It is seen as an example of the literary nonsense genre. The artist John Tenniel provided 42 wood-engraved illustrations for the book. It received positive reviews upon release and is now one of the best-known works of Victorian literature; its narrative, structure, characters and imagery have had a widespread influence on popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre. It is credited as helping end an era of didacticism in children's literature, inaugurating an era in which writing for children aimed to "delight or entertain". The tale plays with logic, giving th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fernando Savater
Fernando Fernández-Savater Martín (born 21 June 1947 at Basque city of San Sebastián) is a Spanish philosopher, essayist and author. Early years and career Born in San Sebastián, he was an Ethics professor at the University of the Basque Country for over a decade. Presently he is a Philosophy professor at the Complutense University of Madrid. He has won several accolades for his literary work, which covers issues as diverse as contemporary ethics, politics, cinema and literary studies. In 1990, Savater and columnist and publisher, Javier Pradera, founded the magazine, ''Claves de Razón Práctica''. In November 2012 he was awarded the prestigious Octavio Paz Prize of Poetry and Essay. In that same year 2012, with issue number 222 (May–June 2012), he became Editor in Chief of "Claves de razón práctica" ( Spanish for "Keys for Practical Reason"), a critical thought and cultural crusading review founded by Javier Pradera in 1990, thus giving start to a second era o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Swanwick
Michael Swanwick (born November 18, 1950) is an American list of fantasy authors, fantasy and List of science-fiction authors, science fiction author who began publishing in the early 1980s. Writing career Swanwick's fiction writing began with short stories, starting in 1980 when he published "Ginungagap" in ''TriQuarterly'' and "The Feast of St. Janis" in ''New Dimensions 11''. Both stories were nominees for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1981. His first novel was ''In the Drift'' (an Ace Science Fiction Specials, Ace Special, 1985), a look at the results of a more catastrophic Three Mile Island accident, Three Mile Island incident, which expands on his earlier short story "Mummer's Kiss". This was followed in 1987 by ''Vacuum Flowers'', an adventurous tour of an inhabited Solar System, where the people of Earth have been subsumed by a cybernetic mass-mind. Some characters’ bodies contain multiple personalities, which can be recorded and edited (or damaged) as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christian Jacq
Christian Jacq (; born 28 April 1947) is a French author and Egyptology, Egyptologist. He has written several novels about ancient Egypt, notably a five book series about pharaoh Ramses II, a character whom Jacq admires greatly. Biography Born in Paris, Jacq's interest in Egyptology began when he was thirteen, when he read ''History of Ancient Egyptian Civilization'' by Jacques Pirenne. This inspired him to write his first novel. By the time he was eighteen, he had written eight books. His first commercially successful book was ''Champollion the Egyptian'', published in 1987. , he has written over fifty books, including several non-fiction books on the subject of Egyptology. Jacq has a doctorate in Egyptian Studies from the University of Paris, Sorbonne. He and his wife later founded the Ramses Institute, which is dedicated to creating a photographic description of Egypt for the preservation of endangered archaeology, archaeological sites. Between 1995 and 1997, he published his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Historical Fantasy
Historical fantasy is a category of fantasy and genre of historical fiction that incorporates fantastic elements (such as magic (fantasy), magic) into a more "realistic" narrative. There is much crossover with other subgenres of fantasy; those classed as King Arthur, Arthurian, Celts, Celtic, or Dark Ages (historiography), Dark Ages could just as easily be placed in historical fantasy. Stories fitting this classification generally take place prior to the 20th century. Films of this genre may have plots set in biblical times or classical antiquity. They often have plots based very loosely on mythology or legends of Greek-Roman history, or the surrounding cultures of the same era. Overview Historical fantasy usually takes one of three common approaches: # Magic in fiction, Magic, mythical creatures, such as dragons, or other supernatural elements, such as magic rings, co-exist invisibly with the mundane world, with the majority of people being unaware of it. In this, it has a clo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
