tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25010816717908188672024-03-14T06:17:05.386-04:00Literary VisionariesUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-76780837211043708002014-03-09T18:17:00.000-04:002014-03-18T15:52:46.190-04:00History of Science Fiction<div class="Bug6200" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them, into the impossible." ~ Arthur C. Clarke</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The literary genre of science fiction is diverse, and its exact definition remains a contested question among both scholars and devotees. This lack of consensus is reflected in debates about the genre's history, particularly over determining its exact origins.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are two broad camps of thought, one that identifies the genre's roots in early fantastical works such as the Sumerian <i>Epic of Gilgamesh</i> (earliest Sumerian text versions c. 2150-2000 BCE). A second approach argues that science fiction only became possible sometime between the 17th and early 19th centuries, following the Scientific Revolution and major discoveries in astronomy, physics and mathematics.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Question of deeper origins aside, science fiction developed and boomed in the 20th century, as the deep integration of science and inventions into daily life encouraged a greater interest in literature that explores the relationship between technology, society and the individual. In recent decades, the genre has diversified and become firmly established as a major influence on global culture and thought. </span><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_fiction">Continued </a></span></b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Virtual Introduction to Science Fiction</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Videos, Lectures and more at <a href="http://www.virtual-sf.com/">www.virtual-sf.com</a> </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Depending on which scholar you ask, science fiction begins at so many different stages in human history that it is hard to find a common ground for discussion of the pre-20th century science fiction. Almost all scholars can agree on the fact that the term itself is an invention of the 20th century and that pulp magazines developed the genre into what we commonly understand as classical science fiction. But that is about all the consensus you will get.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.800000190734863px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Voyage to the Moon</i><br />Gustav Dore (1870)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">James Gunn, editor of one of the largest and best science fiction anthologies on the market, starts his <em>Road to Science Fiction </em>with the Summerian epic of Gilgamesh (2000 BC) and in the first volume includes “examples and works that preceded and led up to the contemporary expression of science fiction in magazines and books” (xi). In its pages Gunn includes not only mythology dating back to ancient Greece and Rome, but also many examples from other genres. Similarly, Mark Bould and Sherryl Vint discuss literary predecessors of science fiction in their <em>Routle</em></span><em style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">dge Concise History of Science Fiction</em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (20-39): they name examples of Utopian literature, adventure stories, apocalyptic fiction and tales of science and invention, all of which have had influence on the development of science fiction and intersect with it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most famously though, critic Brian Aldiss argued in his seminal work <em>Billion Year Spree</em> from 1973 that science fiction “was born in the heart and crucible of the English Romantic movement in exile in Switzerland, when the wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote <em>Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus</em>” (3). Gothic fiction, rationalized by modern science, thus becomes an important influence to science fiction which editor Hugo Gernsback picked up on, when he defines what he calls “scientifiction as ‘the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe type of story – a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision’” (Gernsback quoted in Bould and Vint 6).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Independent Scholar, Dr. Brian Stableford, has examined traditions of literary expression that came before this statement and the earliest definition of science fiction as a genre. To read his lecture, <i>Science Fiction Before 1900</i>, click <b><a href="http://virtual-sf.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Stableford.pdf">HERE</a></b>.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-2729354843715071472014-03-08T14:57:00.000-05:002014-03-10T20:22:54.321-04:00Lucian of Samosata (120-180 AD)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">More Than Human</span></strong><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Found at </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">www.daviddarling.info</span></span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Iconic novel from Theodore Sturgeon</span></i> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lucian of Samosata (120-180 AD) was a Syrian-Greek writer responsible for the first fictional accounts of extraterrestrial life. Lucian, whose parents had hoped he might become a sculptor, made a fortune by traveling around Asia Minor, Greece, Italy and other lands giving entertaining speeches, before settling down in Athens to study philosophy.This was a time – the second century AD – when faith in the old gods had all but evaporated, Greek culture and thought was in decay and the great literature of Greece at its height had given way to shallow novels of adventure or romance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All this was grist to Lucian's satirical mill and in his two extraterrestrial stories – precursors of science fiction – he parodies the kind of feeble fantasy that had become popular. The concluding sentence of the preface to his “<a href="https://archive.org/details/lucianstruehisto00lucirich">True History</a>” reads: "I give my readers warning, therefore, not to believe me." And with that he launches into a tale of a group of adventurers who, while sailing through the Pillars of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar), are lifted up by a giant waterspout and deposited on the Moon. There they find themselves embroiled in a full-scale interplanetary war between the king of the Moon and the king of the Sun over colonization rights to Jupiter, involving armies which boast such exotica as stalk-and-mushroom men, acorn-dogs, and cloud-centaurs. The human inhabitants of the Moon are also remarkable:</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A waterspout lifts Lucian's heroes to the moon.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Amongst them, when a man grows old he does not die, but dissolves into smoke and turns to air [a convenient ploy for disposing of dead aliens also used in more recent science fiction, such as 'The Man Trap' and 'Catspaw' episodes of the original Star Trek series]. They all eat the same food, which is frogs roasted on the ashes from a large fire; of these they have plenty which fly about in the air, they get together over the coals, snuff up the scent of them, and this serves for their victuals. Their drink is air squeezed into a cup, which produces a kind of dew.”</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lucian may be off here in Cloudcuckooland (or almost – the trip to the city of Nephelo-coccygia (the cloud cuckoo) actually comes later in the book) but it is interesting that, in his space odyssey, he portrays the Moon and planets as being genuine worlds with unique life-forms of their own. In fact, for many centuries, Lucian's adventure was highly regarded, not as pure fantasy but as speculative fiction, much as we might treat a SF novel by a respected scientist-author today. An example of this is buried in the footnotes of an 1887 edition of Lucian's work (Cassell's National Library series, p. 83). The original translator, one Thomas Franckling, Greek Professor at the University of Cambridge, writing in 1780, had this to say at the point where the Earth is seen suspended in the lunar sky as if it were itself a mere satellite: "Modern astronomers are, I think agreed, that we are to the moon just the same as the moon is to us. Though Lucian's history may be false, therefore, his philosophy, we see, was true." In parentheses after this, the editor of the Cassell edition has inserted the terse comment: "The moon is not habitable, 1887."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In his second space story, “Icaromenippus”, Lucian is again bound for the Moon, this time in the footsteps, or rather the wing-flaps, of his hero who has improved on the ill-fated scheme of Icarus. To his incredulous friend Menippus, the hero explains: "I took, you know, a very large eagle, and a vulture also, one of the strongest I could get, and cut off their wings." Lucian, like many who followed him made no distinction between aeronautics and astronautics, assuming that normal air-assisted flight and breathing are possible on voyages between worlds. Then through his hero, he lets rip on the presumptuousness of earlier philosophers to know about the nature of the universe and life beyond the Earth:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> ... to think that men, who creep upon this Earth, and are not a whit wiser, or can see farther than ourselves ... should tell us the size and form of the stars ... that the sun is a mass of liquid fire, that the moon is inhabited ...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-43318130543474340112014-03-07T18:12:00.000-05:002014-03-09T20:22:05.553-04:00Francis Godwin (1562-1633)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcVqJ8QF0E4_9l4L5UgnDz3wlKOPh9XDFru0x8iti7-RUm7GDMJLFonrWI_Q4I34DdBzb01QkxEyclLHIOPPSJmCphmLQIpGsq2f0HihTgSA1yfWRnx7QNynzpwcTPUMkYFem-QnwZ6IU/s1600/Francis+Godwin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcVqJ8QF0E4_9l4L5UgnDz3wlKOPh9XDFru0x8iti7-RUm7GDMJLFonrWI_Q4I34DdBzb01QkxEyclLHIOPPSJmCphmLQIpGsq2f0HihTgSA1yfWRnx7QNynzpwcTPUMkYFem-QnwZ6IU/s1600/Francis+Godwin.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Francis Godwin, the son of Thomas Godwin, was born at Hannington, Northamptonshire, England in 1562. He died in Whitbourne, Herefordshire, England in Apr 1633. His sister, Margaret (Godwin) Swift was the great, great grandmother of Jonathan Swift who wrote "Gulliver's Travels".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His book "The Man in the Moone" describes a voyage of utopian discovery. Initially considered to be one of his early works, it is now generally thought to have been written in the late 1620s. It was first published posthumously in 1638 under the pseudonym of Domingo Gonsales. The work is notable for its role in what was called the "new astronomy," the branch of astronomy influenced especially by Nicolaus Copernicus, the only astronomer mentioned by name, although the book also draws on the theories of Johannes Kepler and William Gilbert.</span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://archive.org/details/strangevoyageadv00godw">The Man in the Moone</a></span></strong><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The story is written as a first-person narrative from the perspective of Domingo Gonsales, the book's fictional author. In his opening address to the reader the equally fictional translator, E. M., promises "an essay of fancy, where invention is shewed with judgment". </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gonsales is a citizen of Spain, forced to flee to the East Indies after killing a man in a duel. There he prospers by trading in jewels, and having made his fortune decides to return to Spain. But on his voyage home he becomes seriously ill, and he and a negro servant Diego are put ashore on St Helena, a remote island with a reputation for "temperate and healthful" air. A scarcity of food forces Gonsales and Diego to live some miles apart, but Gonsales devises a variety of systems to allow them to communicate. Eventually he comes to rely on a species of bird he describes as some kind of wild swan, a gansa, to carry messages and provisions between himself and Diego. Gonsales gradually comes to realise that these birds are able to carry substantial burdens, and resolves to construct a device by which a number of them harnessed together might be able to support the weight of a man, allowing him to move around the island more conveniently. Following a successful test flight he determines to resume his voyage home, hoping that he might "fill the world with the Fame of [his] Glory and Renown". But on his way back to Spain, accompanied by his birds and the device he calls his Engine, his ship is attacked by a British fleet off the coast of Tenerife and he is forced to escape by taking to the air.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After setting down briefly on Tenerife, Gonsales is forced to take off again by the imminent approach of hostile natives. But rather than flying to a place of safety among the Spanish inhabitants of the island the gansas fly higher and higher. On the first day of his flight Gonsales encounters "illusions of 'Devils and Wicked Spirits'" in the shape of men and women, some of whom he is able to converse with. They provide him with food and drink for his journey and promise to set him down safely in Spain if only he will join their "Fraternity", and "enter into such Covenants as they had made to their Captain and Master, whom they would not name". Gonsales declines their offer, and after a journey of 12 days reaches the Moon. Suddenly feeling very hungry he opens the provisions he was given en route, only to find nothing but dry leaves, goat's hair and animal dung, and that his wine "stunk like Horse-piss". He is soon discovered by the inhabitants of the Moon, the Lunars, whom he finds to be tall Christian people enjoying a happy and carefree life in a kind of pastoral paradise. Gonsales discovers that order is maintained in this apparently utopian state by swapping delinquent children with terrestrial children.<br /><br />The Lunars speak a language consisting "not so much of words and letters as tunes and strange sounds", which Gonsales succeeds in gaining some fluency in after a couple of months. Six months or so after his arrival Gonsales becomes concerned about the condition of his gansas, three of whom have died. Fearing that he may never be able to return to Earth and see his children again if he delays further, he decides to take leave of his hosts, carrying with him a gift of precious stones from the supreme monarch of the Moon, Irdonozur. The stones are of three different sorts: Poleastis, which can store and generate great quantities of heat; Macbrus, which generates great quantities of light; and Ebelus, which when one side of the stone is clasped to the skin renders a man weightless, or half as heavy again if the other side is touched.<br /><br />Gonsales harnesses his gansas to his Engine and leaves the Moon on 29 Mar1601. He lands in China about nine days later, without re-encountering the illusions of men and women he had seen on his outward journey and with the help of his Ebelus, which helps the birds to avoid plummeting to Earth as the weight of Gonsales and his Engine threatens to become too much for them. He is quickly arrested and taken before the local mandarin, accused of being a magician, and as a result is confined in the mandarin's palace. He learns to speak the local dialect of Chinese, and after some months of confinement is summoned before the mandarin to give an account of himself and his arrival in China, which gains him the mandarin's trust and favour. Gonsales hears of a group of Jesuits, and is granted permission to visit them. He writes an account of his adventures, which the Jesuits arrange to have sent back to Spain. The story ends with Gonsales's fervent wish that he may one day be allowed to return to Spain, and "that by enriching my country with the knowledge of these hidden mysteries, I may at least reap the glory of my fortunate misfortunes".</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-83296591925543760682014-03-07T18:00:00.000-05:002014-03-11T18:34:04.410-04:00Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Johannes Kepler, son of Heinrich Kepler and Katharina Guldenmann, was born at the Free Imperial City of Weil der Stadt, Germany (now part of Stuttgart) on 27 Dec 1571.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1597 he married Gemma van Dvijneveldt (a widow with a young daughter), with whom he had five children: Heirich and Susanna (both died in infancy), Susanna, Friedrich and Ludwig. Following the death of his first wife, he married Susanna Reuttinger in 1613. The children of this marriage were Margareta Regina, Katharina and Sebald (all died in childhood), Cordula, Fridmar and Hildebert. Kepler died in Regensburg, Bavaria on 15 Nov 1630.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kepler was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. A key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, he is best known for his laws of planetary motion, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi and Epitome of Copernican Astronomy. These works also provided one of the foundations for Isaac Newton's theory of universal gravitation.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Read it <b><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=OdCJAS0eQ64C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">HERE</a></b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Around 1608, Kepler circulated a manuscript of what would eventually be published (posthumously) in 1634 by his son Ludwig Kepler as "Somnium" (The Dream). In the narrative, an Icelandic boy and his witch mother learn of an island named Levania (our Moon) from a daemon (demon). "Somnium" presents a detailed imaginative description of how the Earth might look when viewed from the Moon, and is considered the first serious scientific treatise on lunar astronomy. Part of the purpose of "Somnium" was to describe what practicing astronomy would be like from the perspective of another planet, to show the feasibility of a non-geocentric system. Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov have referred to it as the first work of science fiction.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Years later, a distorted version of the story may have instigated the witchcraft trial against his mother, as the mother of the narrator consults a demon to learn the means of space travel.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1615, Ursula Reingold, a woman in a financial dispute with Kepler's brother Christoph, claimed Kepler's mother Katharina had made her sick with an evil brew. The dispute escalated, and in 1617 Katharina was accused of witchcraft; witchcraft trials were relatively common in central Europe at this time. Beginning in August 1620, she was imprisoned for fourteen months. She was released in October 1621, thanks in part to the extensive legal defense drawn up by Kepler. The accusers had no stronger evidence than rumors, along with a distorted, second-hand version of Kepler's <i>Somnium</i>, in which a woman mixes potions and enlists the aid of a demon. Katharina was subjected to <i>territio verbalis</i>, a graphic description of the torture awaiting her as a witch, in a final attempt to make her confess.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Following her eventual acquittal, Kepler composed 223 footnotes to the story—several times longer than the actual text—which explained the allegorical aspects as well as the considerable scientific content (particularly regarding lunar geography) hidden within the text.</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-7211090866439359272014-03-05T20:22:00.000-05:002014-03-09T20:56:14.393-04:00Cyrano de Bergerac 1619-1655)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoCYDDlisqf5D0Bv42-6Tpb-YiCIUMcZCeJFXtPCHx15SHyKoeV-JMf4gOvPoO3FOlFfs_8VTOHX_W2a4smbur9f_HkScm3Jj7J-fUmoAvibnlw4eG1DkFphejiNdHvCHL9SRUkhveY2c/s1600/Cyrano1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoCYDDlisqf5D0Bv42-6Tpb-YiCIUMcZCeJFXtPCHx15SHyKoeV-JMf4gOvPoO3FOlFfs_8VTOHX_W2a4smbur9f_HkScm3Jj7J-fUmoAvibnlw4eG1DkFphejiNdHvCHL9SRUkhveY2c/s1600/Cyrano1.jpg" height="200" width="146" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hercule-Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, son of Abel de Cyrano, lord of Mauvieres and Bererac, and Esperance Bellanger, was born in Paris, France on 6 Mar 1619. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Though regarded as the father of Scientific Romances, and therefore the grandfather of Science Fiction, Jules Verne was not without his antecedents. Going far back, very far, into the earliest of literature that could be considered a forerunner of the genre, Verne looks to a fellow countryman. He is none other than the man most famous for his nose, Cyrano de Bergerac. Published posthumously in 1657, de Bergerac was the first Frenchman to take a fantastic journey into space with "L'Autre Monde: ou les États et Empires de la Lune" (Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">De Bergerac, like so many "freethinkers", was a better believer in reason than a user of it. Nevertheless, he was a biting critic of his times. Making use of Galileo's new worlds, he took his fanciful visit to the Moon to observe the customs of its strange people. Like authors Johannes Kepler and Bishop Francis Godwin before him, de Bergerac was less concerned with a credible means of getting thwew. Kepler's man was kidnapped during an eclipse and Godwin's arrived on an airship pulled by geese. De Bergerac had a slightly more difficult time of it: His first attempt was to use bottles of dew attached to his body. As the morning light rose, so too would the dew, carrying him along. This fails and lands him, thanks to the Earth's rotation, in New France (the colony of Quebec). In Quebec, de Bergerac fashions an airship that also failes. Finally the airship is converted into a rocket, intended for the St. Jean Baptiste Day celebrations, which conveys him to the stars.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfGhB_SUl5-pUe6VzJwVknwGRgt5nS_TbEVbPNzGxr-fhv_yZvlZvYzZ5624Yy3z8PyY5p4VdvwmOAYWHu6h1V4R6eQhMKYCZCpohsTCA3Nw-LqnpUhYDXJtxAxApmKRHnbTrAf-eAUks/s1600/Cyrano+voyages.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfGhB_SUl5-pUe6VzJwVknwGRgt5nS_TbEVbPNzGxr-fhv_yZvlZvYzZ5624Yy3z8PyY5p4VdvwmOAYWHu6h1V4R6eQhMKYCZCpohsTCA3Nw-LqnpUhYDXJtxAxApmKRHnbTrAf-eAUks/s1600/Cyrano+voyages.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once on the Moon, Cyrano makes a series of startling discoveries: it is, in fact, the Garden of Eden. After nourishing himself on the Tree of Life, he encounters Elijah and learns the history of Biblical spacefarers. Banished from Eden, Adam and Eve took flight to Earth. Enoch, on the other hand, was taken up to the Moon by bottling the smoke of a pious burnt sacrifice. Noah's daughter simply washed ashore after taking off with the Ark's lifeboat. Elijah used a golden chariot of his own construction, repeatedly tossing a magnetic ball into the air and letting the chariot soar upwards towards it, repeating the process until he arrived. <br /><br />These are not the Moon's only inhabitants, however. After taking a bite from the apple of the Tree of Knowledge, de Bergerac is introduced to spacefarers from the Sun who have set up their colony on La Lune. He is a bit more comfortable with these Rationalists than he is with the Biblical prophets. Godwin's astronautical pioneer also makes an appearance, when he is mistaken for a type of monkey and de Bergerac mistaken for a female of the species.<br /><br />Several authors followed in the footsteps of de Bergerac. Voltaire elicited the help of aliens to satirize human self-importance in the face of a vast cosmos. Simon Tyssot de Patot critiqued religion and the arts via a lost world in 1710s "Voyages et Aventures de Jacques Massé." Louis-Sébastien Mercier visited "L'An 2440." Jonathan Swift took Gulliver around the planet to its many strange and varied societies. Baron Munchausen himself visited Diana several times. Washington Irving used "The Conquest of the Moon" as a parable of American expansionism. Fellow American George Tucker took the first steps in transforming these satires into Scientific Romances by taking a great deal more care in making plausible the means by which his persona took "A Voyage to the Moon" in 1827.<br /><br />When he passed away</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> in </span>Sannoise<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, France on 28 Jul 1655</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, De Bergerac was at work on a second story, "Les </span>États<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span>et<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Empires </span>du<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span>Soleil<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">" (The States and Empires of the Sun, 1662). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-24939135707926200402014-03-04T16:30:00.000-05:002014-03-10T19:04:43.393-04:00Margaret Lucas Cavendish (1623-1673)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Margaret Lucas, daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Lucas, was born in 1623 at St. John's Abbey, Essex, England. Her father was exiled for a time after a duel that resulted in the death of "one Mr. Brooks," and returned to England after being pardoned by King James in 1603.<br />
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Margaret became a maid of honour to Queen Henrietta Maria and, in 1644, accompanied her into exile in France where she lived for a time at the court of the young King Louis XIV. In 1645 she became the second wife of William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Cavendish notes that her husband liked her bashfulness and states that he was the only man she was ever in love with, loving him not for title, wealth or power, but for merit, justice, gratitude, duty and fidelity. She believes these to be attributes that will hold people together, even through misfortune. She further credits such qualities as assisting her husband and her family to endure the suffering they experienced as a result of their political allegiance. They had no children.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Read It <b><a href="http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/newcastle/blazing/blazing.html">HERE</a></b></span></td></tr>
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Margaret was a poet, philosopher, writer of prose romances, essayist and playwright who published under her own name at a time when most women writers published anonymously. Her writing addressed a number of topics, including gender, power, manners, scientific method and philosophy.<br />
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Her Utopian romance, "The Blazing World", is one of the earliest examples of science fiction which, as noted by many, criticized and explored such issues as science, gender and power. Cavendish writes herself into the book, which details a fictional new world (not just a new continent but an entirely separate world) and its empress. She remarks in her epilogue to the reader that she herself is empress of the philosophical world. In fact, in Cavendish's epistle to the reader she remarks that, in much the same way as there is a Charles the first, she would be considered Margaret the first.<br />
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She published over a dozen original works; inclusion of her revised works brings her total number of publications to twenty one. Cavendish has been championed and criticized as a unique and groundbreaking woman writer. She rejected the Aristotelianism and mechanical philosophy of the 17th century, preferring a vitalist model instead. She criticized and engaged with the members of the Royal Society of London and the philosophers Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes and Robert Boyle. She has been claimed as an advocate for animals and as an early opponent of animal testing.<br />
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Margarget died in x on 15 Dec 1673Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-27661091904387992402014-03-04T16:18:00.000-05:002014-03-17T17:45:47.537-04:00Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ludvig Holberg (Baron of Holberg), son of Christian Nielsen Holberg and Karen Lem, was born on 3 Dec 1684 in Bergen, Norway. He died in Copenhagen, Denmark on 28 Jan 1754.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His only novel, “Niels Klim’s Underground Travels”, is a satirical science fiction/fantasy story that describes a Utopian society from an outsider's point of view, and often pokes fun at diverse cultural and social topics such as morality, science, sexual equality, religion, governments and philosophy. It is one of the first science fiction novels to use the Hollow Earth concept. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Holberg knew that the satirical content of the novel would cause an uproar in Denmark-Norway, so the book was first published in Germany, and in Latin, as “Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum” (1741). He thus got a broader audience than he would have gotten in his homeland. The novel made him widely acclaimed across Europe. Danish, German, French and Dutch translations were also published in 1741. </span><br />
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<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=dYy7tJdlKE8C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Niels Klim’s Underground Travels</b></span></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUaK69LzPBt7EYpHhYrkwfdf0_38vH7hIipc7oOx91kuj_pqpjg1llVphKZFJnnqxPL6tUP_Jnazpdp7Emxufn4MVw2TQWLDn3Y0yO_6GuDQHngTB_eflXRslPQPeRbcdV_MaZ64XINRA/s1600/Niels+Klim.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUaK69LzPBt7EYpHhYrkwfdf0_38vH7hIipc7oOx91kuj_pqpjg1llVphKZFJnnqxPL6tUP_Jnazpdp7Emxufn4MVw2TQWLDn3Y0yO_6GuDQHngTB_eflXRslPQPeRbcdV_MaZ64XINRA/s1600/Niels+Klim.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The novel starts with a foreword that assures that everything in the story is a real account of the title character's exploits in the Underworld. The story is set, according to the book, in the Norwegian harbor town of Bergen in 1664, after Klim returns from Copenhagen, where he has studied philosophy and theology at the University of Copenhagen and graduated magna cum laude. His curiosity drives him to investigate a strange cave in a mountainside above the town, which sends out regular gusts of warm air. He ends up falling down the hole, and after a while he finds himself floating in free space.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After a few days of orbiting the planet which revolves around the inner sun, he is attacked by a gryphon, and he falls down on the planet, which is named Nazar. There he wanders about for a short while until he is attacked once again, this time by an ox. He climbs up into a tree, and to his astonishment the tree can move and talk (this one screamed), and he is taken prisoner by tree-like creatures with up to six arms and faces just below the branches. He is accused of attempted rape on the town clerk's wife, and is put on trial. The case is dismissed and he is set by the Lord of Potu (the Utopian state in which he now is located) to learn the language.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Klim quickly learns the language of the Potuans, but this reflects badly on him when the Lord is about to issue him a job, because the Potuans believe that if one perceives a problem at a slow rate, the better it will be understood and solved. But, since he has considerably longer legs than the Potuans, who walk very slowly, he is set to be the Lord's personal courier, delivering letters and suchlike.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the course of the book, Klim vividly chronicles the culture of the Potuans, their religion, their way of life and the many different countries located on Nazar. After his two-month long circumnavigation on foot, he is appalled by the fact that men and women are equal and share the same kind of jobs, so he files a suggestion to the Lord of Potu to remove women from higher positions in society. His suggestion is poorly received and he is sentenced to be exiled to the inner rim of the Earth's crust. There he becomes familiar with a country inhabited by sentient monkeys, and after a few years he becomes emperor of the land of Quama, inhabited by the only creatures in the Underworld that look like humans. There, he marries and fathers a son. But again he is driven from hearth and home due to his tyranny and as he escapes he falls into a hole, which carries him through the crust and back up to Bergen again.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There, he is mistaken by the townsfolk to be the Wandering Jew, mostly due to a lingual misunderstanding (he asks a couple of young boys where he is in quamittian, which is Jeru Pikal Salim, and the boys think he is talking about Jerusalem). He learns that he has been away for twelve years, and is taken in by his old friend, mayor Abelin, who writes down everything Klim tells him. He later receives a job as principal of the college of Bergen and marries.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Book Notes</b></span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The book is significant in the history of science fiction, being one of the first science-fiction novels in history along with Johannes Kepler's “Somnium” (“The Dream”, 1634), Cyrano de Bergerac's ”Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon” (1656), Jonathan Swift's “Gulliver's Travels” (1726) and Voltaire's “Micromégas” (1752). Along with a number of those stories, an excerpt was included in the anthology “The Road to Science Fiction, Volume 1: From Gilgamesh to Wells.”</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The renowned Danish Communist author and artist Hans Scherfig [1905–1979] created a graphic retelling of "Niels Klims underjordiske rejse", which was originally published in the Danish newspaper Land og folk [Country and people] from 3 Jul 1955 to 21 Jan 1956 and later as a book at Sirius Publishing House, Risskov, Denmark in October 1961.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The story was adapted to a costly 3-episode TV series for The Danish Broadcasting Corporation in 1984, starring actor Frits Helmuth in the title role.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In one chapter, Klim refers to Pliny the Elder and his Naturalis Historia when he feels that his descriptions of the Underworld inhabitants would seem too incredible for other humans to believe.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are a few characters in the book that were actual persons. Niels Klim (d. 1690) was employed as a bell ringer at Korskirken, a church in downtown Bergen. He was also a retailer of books and a publisher. Klim's friend in the book, Mayor Abelin, was also a real person named Rasmus Chistenssen Abelin who was the mayor of Bergen in Klim's lifetime.</span></li>
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<span id="Allusions">
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-27097504771070199052014-03-04T15:30:00.000-05:002014-03-15T20:48:18.596-04:00Voltaire (1694-1778)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD9dZqDdS4c0R0wJVq-5AYOANTMHHiaG7TYWQrTImIRW_x2AmDR27a0lbfVl8_wo5_T9w856o-L37iUYLfnyavKTFrX6SrKq4JK6t2Blf1iMh35qdKzfZ9y5GUlmN0kvnOO9-t1z02iT4/s1600/Voltaire3.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD9dZqDdS4c0R0wJVq-5AYOANTMHHiaG7TYWQrTImIRW_x2AmDR27a0lbfVl8_wo5_T9w856o-L37iUYLfnyavKTFrX6SrKq4JK6t2Blf1iMh35qdKzfZ9y5GUlmN0kvnOO9-t1z02iT4/s1600/Voltaire3.png" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Francois-Marie Arouet, son of Francois Arouet and Marie Marguerite d'Aumart, was born in Paris, France on 21 Nov 1694. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Known by his nom de plume Voltaire, Arouet was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of expression and separation of church and state. He was a versatile writer, producing works in almost every literary form including plays, poems, novels, essays and historical and scientific works.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Voltaire was exiled to Tulle in 1715 for mocking the regent Orleans. Two years later, in 1717, he returned to Paris, only to be arrested and exiled to the Bastille for a year on charges of writing libelous poetry. He was sent to the Bastille again in 1726 for arguing with the Chevalier de Rohan and was detained there for two weeks before being shipped off to England where he remained for three years. In 1733, the publication of his <i>Letters on the English Nation</i> angered the French church and government, forcing him to flee to Lorraine. In 1778, He remained there for the next 15 years with his mistress, Emile De Breteuil, at the Chateau de Direy, visiting Paris occasionally as of 1735, when he was granted re-entry. By 1778, the French public had begun to regard him as a literary genius, and he returned to Paris a hero. He died there on 30 May 1778.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1752 he wrote "Micromegas," perhaps the first piece of science fiction. The tale recounts the visit to Earth of a being from a planet circling the star Sirius, and of his companion from the planet Saturn. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The story is organized into seven brief chapters.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Micromegas Captures a Ship</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first describes Micromégas, an inhabitant of one of the planets that orbits Sirius. His home world is 21.6 million times greater in circumference than the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Earth</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. Micromégas stands 20,000 feet tall. When he is almost 450 years old, approaching the end of his infancy, Micromégas writes a scientific book examining the insects on his planet, which at 100 feet are too small to be detected by ordinary microscopes. This book is considered heresy, and after a 200-year trial, he is banished from the court for a term of 800 years. Micromégas takes this as an incentive to travel around the Universe in a quest to develop his intellect and his spirit.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His first stop is Saturn, where he befriends the secretary of the Academy of Saturn, a man less than a third of his size (standing only 6,000 feet tall). They discuss the differences between their planets. The Saturnian has 72 senses; the Sirian has 1,000. The Saturnian lives for 15,000 Earth years; the Sirian lives for 10.5 million years. At the end of their conversation, they decide to take a philosophical journey together.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eventually, they arrive on Earth and circumnavigate it in 36 hours, with the Saturnian only getting his lower legs wet in the deepest ocean and the Sirian barely wetting his ankles. They decide that the planet must be devoid of life, since it is too small for them to see with the naked eye. In the Baltic Sea, the Saturnian happened to spot a tiny speck swimming about, and he picks it up to discover that it is a whale. As they examine it, a boatful of philosophers returning from an Arctic voyage happens to run aground nearby.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The travellers examine the boat and, upon discovering the lifeforms inside it, they conclude that the tiny beings are too small to be of any intelligence or spirit. Yet they gradually realize the beings are speaking to each other, and they devise a hearing tube with the clippings of their fingernails in order to hear the tiny voices. After listening for a while, they learn the human language and begin a conversation, wherein they are shocked to discover the breadth of the human intellect.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The final chapter sees the humans testing the philosophies of Aristotle, Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz and Locke against the travellers' wisdom. When the travellers hear the theory of Aquinas that the world was made uniquely for mankind, they fall into an enormous fit of laughter. Taking pity on the humans, the Sirian decides to write them a book that will explain the point of everything to them. When the volume is presented to the Academy of Science in Paris, the secretary opens the book only to find blank pages.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Read it <b><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30123/30123-h/30123-h.htm">HERE </a></b>...</span><br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-50750606889024066292014-02-23T19:29:00.000-05:002014-03-18T16:50:51.367-04:00Faddey Bulgarin (1789-1859)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLQAag6aax_AWZuZ4npq5g9uabLsvqlzQFrVYT1Usi1oIXEfpGjNbe3N6sroyATr_rvsh3XOnNE2RzEPneN1u_GsbHEUJxkhyLPNce4kNx8oiUFHUuYj8ikgLpi2gZMFI0hai95HVdNgQ/s1600/Faddey+Bulgarin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLQAag6aax_AWZuZ4npq5g9uabLsvqlzQFrVYT1Usi1oIXEfpGjNbe3N6sroyATr_rvsh3XOnNE2RzEPneN1u_GsbHEUJxkhyLPNce4kNx8oiUFHUuYj8ikgLpi2gZMFI0hai95HVdNgQ/s1600/Faddey+Bulgarin.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Faddey Venediktovich Bulgarin, son of a noble Polish family, was born near Minsk, Belarus on 5 Jul 1789. He died near Derpt (now Tartu) on 13 Sep 1859. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His father, one of Kosciuszko's associates, was exiled to Siberia for having assassinated a Russian general.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some of Bulgarin's stories were science fiction: "Probable Tall-Tales" is a far future story about the 29th century; "Improbable Tall-Tales" is a fantastic voyage into hollow Earth; "Mitrofanushka's Adventures in the Moon" is a satire.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-599764848186211732014-02-23T18:29:00.000-05:002014-03-18T16:51:11.798-04:00Polly Cabell (1769-1858)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Mary Hopkins "Polly" Cabell, daughter of Joseph Cabell and Mary Hopkins, was born in Buckingham County, VA on 22 Feb 1769. In 1785 she married John Breckinridge with whom she had 9 children: Letitia, Joseph Cabell, Mary Hopkins, Robert, Mary Ann, John, Robert Jefferson, William Lewis and James Monroe. She died in Jefferson County, KY on 26 Mar 1858.<br />
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In her story "A Trip to the Moon", which was Published in <cite>Electra; A Belles Lettres Monthly for Young People</cite> (February 1884), a Dutchman who is preparing a giant cask of beer for the forthcoming Cambrinus' Congress is hurled out into space with the cask explodes. He reaches the moon, landing safely in a snow drift on the sice of an extinct volcano. As he wanders about, he sees that the moon is barren of life and he anticipates death from hunger and thirst. He shudders with horror, and awakens in bed back on earch. He had simply been knocked unconscious by the explosion. As the author states, "His beer was not his bier* after all."<br />
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*A bier is a movable frame on which a coffin or a corpse is placed before burial or cremation or on which it is carried to the grave.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-45738439033465065342014-02-17T16:47:00.000-05:002014-03-18T17:00:13.568-04:00John Herschel (1792-1871)<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>The Great Moon Hoax of 1835</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Throughout the final week of August 1835, a long article appeared in serial form on the front page of the <i>New York <i>Sun</i></i>. It bore the headline:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">GREAT ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES <br /> LATELY MADE <br /> BY SIR JOHN HERSCHEL, L.L.D. F.R.S. &c. <br /> At the Cape of Good Hope <br /> [From Supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science]</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /> The article started by triumphantly listing a series of stunning astronomical breakthroughs the famous British astronomer, Sir John Herschel, had made "by means of a telescope of vast dimensions and an entirely new principle." Herschel, the article declared, had established a "new theory of cometary phenomena"; he had discovered planets in other solar systems; and he had "solved or corrected nearly every leading problem of mathematical astronomy." Then, almost as if it were an afterthought, the article revealed Herschel's final, stunning achievement. He had discovered life on the moon. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lithograph of "ruby amhitheater" for <i>The Sun</i><br />August 28, 1835 (4th article of 6)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The article was an elaborate hoax. Herschel hadn't really observed life on the moon, nor had he accomplished any of the other astronomical breakthroughs credited to him in the article. In fact, Herschel wasn't even aware until much later that such discoveries had been attributed to him. However, the announcement caused enormous excitement throughout America and Europe. To this day, the moon hoax is remembered as one of the most sensational media hoaxes of all time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Continued <b><a href="http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/archive/permalink/the_great_moon_hoax">HERE</a></b> ...</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-729665344975268952014-02-05T17:29:00.000-05:002014-03-10T17:27:09.868-04:00George Tucker (1775-1861)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiukHMEL1MGiuyTFBAzpgcRatMuFh4IGdWbEsFLTJgnjzA6if4BYfI76EMcj5tlZrlDpFZpaLEHGZa9DINdoOMNmY84JqyBdW94I1xg6f3zYP_s13S3BmWFbvLUUj67iiCEZss9CQpHXck/s1600/George+Tucker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiukHMEL1MGiuyTFBAzpgcRatMuFh4IGdWbEsFLTJgnjzA6if4BYfI76EMcj5tlZrlDpFZpaLEHGZa9DINdoOMNmY84JqyBdW94I1xg6f3zYP_s13S3BmWFbvLUUj67iiCEZss9CQpHXck/s1600/George+Tucker.jpg" height="200" width="140" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">American Politician, George Tucker, was the son of Daniel Tucker and Elizabeth. He born at St. George Island, Bermuda on 20 Aug 1775 and died in Albemarle County, VA on 10 Apr 1861. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">George married first in 1797 to Mary Byrd Farley who died childless in 1799. In 1802 he married Maria Ball Carter with whom he had six children: Daniel George, Eleanor Rose, Maria, Elizabeth, Lelia and Harriett.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1827, using the pseudonym <i>J</i>oseph Atterley, he wrote the satire <a href="https://archive.org/details/voyagetomoonwith00tuck">"A Voyage to the Moon: With Some Account of the Manners and Customs, Science and Philosophy, of the People of Morosofia, and Other Lunarians."</a> It is one of the earliest American works of science fiction, and was relatively successful, earning Tucker $100 from the sale of one thousand copies. It received positive reviews from the <i>American Quarterly Review</i> and the <i>Western Monthly Review</i>. Tucker used "The Voyage" to ridicule the social manners, religion and professions of some of his colleagues and to criticize some erroneous scientific methods and results apparent to him at the time.</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-39"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Tucker_(politician)#cite_note-39"></a></sup><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-60491524540437228732013-02-23T20:30:00.000-05:002014-03-09T18:38:55.442-04:00Edward Bellamy (1850-1898)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Edward Bellamy, son of Rufus King Bellamy and Maria Louisa Putnam, was born in Chicopee, MA on 26 Mar 1850. I</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">n 1882 he married Emma Augusta Sanderson, with whom he had two children: Paul and Marion. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the age of 25, he developed tuberculosis and suffered with its effects throughout his adult life. He died as a result of the disease in Chicopee on 22 May 1898. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bellamy's early novels, including "Six to One" (1877), "Dr. Heidenhoff's Process" (1880) and "Miss Ludington's Sister" (1884) were unremarkable works, making use of standard psychological plots. A turn to utopian science fiction with "Looking Backward, 2000–1887," published in January 1888, captured the public imagination and catapulted him to literary fame. The publisher of the book could scarcely keep up with demand. Within a year the book had sold some 200,000 copies and by the end of the 19th century it had sold more copies than any other book published in America outside of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/bellamy/toc.html">Looking Backward</a></b></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF7en3mv9SfRvoxeFJBXVovKZIJfqvswhj2j40kQOTp9sK5k4o5tazsAwOnc8_fp6twarYmwemp1E1L0gIcwAYIrkAls1UUCW4xIx5HB4a9S_bOle7txVWlw2TpbyLfM0w1IJYO3i182Q/s1600/Looking+Backward.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF7en3mv9SfRvoxeFJBXVovKZIJfqvswhj2j40kQOTp9sK5k4o5tazsAwOnc8_fp6twarYmwemp1E1L0gIcwAYIrkAls1UUCW4xIx5HB4a9S_bOle7txVWlw2TpbyLfM0w1IJYO3i182Q/s1600/Looking+Backward.jpg" height="320" width="212" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The book tells the story of Julian West, a young American who, towards the end of the 19th century, falls into a deep, hypnosis-induced sleep and wakes up one hundred and thirteen years later. He finds himself in the same location (Boston, Massachusetts), but in a totally changed world: It is the year 2000 and, while he was sleeping, the United States has been transformed into a socialist utopia. The remainder of the book outlines Bellamy's thoughts about improving the future. The major themes include problems associated with capitalism, a proposed socialist solution of a nationalisation of all industry, the use of an "industrial army" to organize production and distribution, as well as how to ensure free cultural production under such conditions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The young man readily finds a guide, Doctor Leete, who shows him around and explains all the advances of this new age; including drastically reduced working hours for people performing menial jobs and almost instantaneous, Internet-like delivery of goods. Everyone retires with full benefits at age 45, and may eat in any of the public kitchens. The productive capacity of America is nationally owned, and the goods of society are equally distributed to its citizens. A considerable portion of the book is dialogue between Leete and West wherein West expresses his confusion about how the future society works and Leete explains the answers using various methods, such as metaphors or direct comparisons with 19th-century society.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although Bellamy's novel did not discuss technology or the economy in detail, commentators frequently compare <i>Looking Backward</i> with actual economic and technological developments. For example, Julian West is taken to a store which (with its descriptions of cutting out the middleman to cut down on waste in a similar way to the consumers' cooperatives of his own day based on the <i>Rochdale Principles</i> of 1844) somewhat resembles a modern warehouse club like BJ's, Costco, or Sam's Club. He additionally introduces a concept of "credit" cards in chapters 9, 10, 11, 13, 25, and 26, but these actually function like modern debit cards. All citizens receive an equal amount of "credit." Those with more difficult, specialized, dangerous or unpleasant jobs work fewer hours (in contrast to the real-world practice of paying them more for their efforts of, presumably, the same hours). Bellamy also predicts both sermons and music being available in the home through cable "telephone". Bellamy labeled the philosophy behind the vision "nationalism", and his work inspired the formation of more than 160 Nationalist Clubs to propagate his ideas.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although Bellamy claimed he did not write "Looking Backward" as a blueprint for political action, but rather sought to write "a literary fantasy, a fairy tale of social felicity," the book inspired legions of inspired readers to establish so-called Nationalist Clubs, beginning in Boston late in 1888.<span style="font-size: x-small;"><u> </u></span>Bellamy's vision of a country relieved of its social ills through abandonment of the principle of competition and establishment of state ownership of industry proved an appealing panacea to a generation of intellectuals alienated from the dark side of Gilded Age America. By 1891 it was reported that no fewer than 162 Nationalist Clubs were in existence.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-69144364783234605812013-02-23T17:35:00.000-05:002014-03-09T18:39:04.887-04:00Edwin Balmer (1883-1959)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Edwin Balmer, son of Thomas Balmer and Helen Clark, was born in Chicago, IL on 26 Jul 1883. He died on 21 Mar 1959. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1909 he married Katharine MacHarg, sister of writer William McHarg. After her death he married Grace A. Kee.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Together with author Philip Wylie, Balmer wrote the catastrophe novels "When Worlds Collide" (1933) and "After Worlds Collide" (1934). The former was made into an award winning movie in 1951. With artist Marvin Bradley, Balmer also helped create the syndicated comic strip "Speed Spaulding", partiall based on the Worlds Collide series, which ran from 1938-1941 in the commic book <i>Famous Funnies</i>.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-3483359052838310152013-02-23T17:34:00.000-05:002014-03-06T14:37:44.403-05:00When Worlds Collide (1951) - Theatrical Trailer<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/fhZatyY1ooA" width="459"></iframe><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-66125511845711250092013-02-23T14:24:00.000-05:002014-03-09T18:40:10.119-04:00Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Edgar Rice Burroughs, son of Maj. George Tyler Burroughs and Mary Evaline Zieger, was born in Chicago, IL on 1 Sep 1875. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In January 1900 he married Emma Hulbert with whom he had three children: Joan, Hulbert and John Coleman. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 19.2px; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Joan Burroughs married Tarzan actor James Pierce. From 1932-1936 they were the voices of Tarzan and Jane on national radio show<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; font-family: sans-serif; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 19.2px; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Tarzan</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 19.2px; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">. They remained married until Joan's death in 1972. Both are buried in Shelbyville, IN and their tombstones bear the inscriptions Tarzan and Jane.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Burroughs divorced Emma in 1934 and married actress Florence Gilbert Dearholt the following year. They divorced in 1942 and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">died in Encino, CA on 19, Mar 1950.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Aiming his work at the pulps. Burroughs wrote popular<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>science fiction<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and fantasy stories involving Earth adventurers who were transported to lost islands, the earth's hollow interior (in his Pellucidar stories) and various planets — notably<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Barsoom (Burroughs's fictional name for<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Mars) and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Amtor (his fictional name for<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Venus). Much of his work was published in the <em>Argosy</em> and <em>All Story</em> magazines.<br />
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Burroughs first story,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Under the Moons of Mars</i>, was serialized by<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Frank Munsey<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>in the February-July 1912 issues of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The All-Story. </i>It was written under the name Norman Bean to protect his reputation. <span class="Apple-converted-space">It </span>inaugurated the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Barsoom series. <em>A Princess of Mars</em> was published as a book by A.C. McClurg of Chicago in 1917.</span><br />
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Burroughs soon took up writing full-time and by the time the run of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Under the Moons of Mars</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>finished he had completed two novels, including<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Tarzan of the Apes </i>published in October 1912.</span><br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarzan" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Tarzan"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tarzan</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>was a cultural sensation when introduced and Burroughs was determined to capitalize on Tarzan's popularity in every way possible. He planned to exploit Tarzan through several different media including a syndicated Tarzan<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>comic strip,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>movies and merchandise. Experts in the field advised against this course of action, stating that the different media would just end up competing against each other. Burroughs went ahead, however, and proved the experts wrong — the public wanted Tarzan in whatever fashion he was offered. Tarzan remains one of the most successful fictional characters to this day and is a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>cultural icon.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In either 1915 or 1919, Burroughs purchased a large ranch north of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Los Angeles, California, which he named "Tarzana." The citizens of the community that sprang up around the ranch voted to adopt that name when<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Tarzana, California<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>was formed in 1927.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Also, the unincorporated community of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Tarzan, Texas, was formally named in 1927 when the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>U.S. Postal Service<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>accepted the name,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>reputedly coming from the popularity of an early Tarzan comic strip and the silent film<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Tarzan of the Apes</i> (1918), starring<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Elmo Lincoln.</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-66321321738046956232013-02-23T14:20:00.000-05:002014-03-05T15:07:04.914-05:00Tarzan of the Apes (1918)<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/DiDzleNN16Q" width="459"></iframe><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-19888512031856376622013-02-22T11:22:00.000-05:002014-03-09T18:40:48.391-04:00Ray Cummings (1887-1957)<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Time is what keeps everything from happening at once." ~Ray Cummings</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Raymond King Cummings was born in
New York on 30 Aug 1887. He died in Mount Vernon, NY on 23 Jan 1957.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">An American author of science
fiction, Cummings was rated one of the "founding fathers of the science
fiction pulp genre". </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Educated at Princeton University, he served as an assistant to
Thomas Edison for five years, before embarking on a career in writing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">His debut novelette, “The Girl in
the Golden Atom”, was originally published in </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Argosy</i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> in 1919. His first novel, "The Shadow Girl"</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">appeared in 1921. In 1923, they were
combined into the novel “The Girl in the Golden Atom” which has been reprinted
numerous times, often in an abridged version.</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The Girl in the Golden Atom</b></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi62ZjnBTcTKsMM2ZQPHdwx_wQavh2ElZKYMhvWVR8Hp5FZWo79vob-YT6KxleenQ4phRwqzO34qQS0wNjyJfFv_YPNd4aeOweS0heWvHmUPwEnC8QFbjKKvrS67JITpQlM33viUxNQ9to/s1600/Golden+Atom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi62ZjnBTcTKsMM2ZQPHdwx_wQavh2ElZKYMhvWVR8Hp5FZWo79vob-YT6KxleenQ4phRwqzO34qQS0wNjyJfFv_YPNd4aeOweS0heWvHmUPwEnC8QFbjKKvrS67JITpQlM33viUxNQ9to/s1600/Golden+Atom.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Hear it <b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0m0e6RSklOA&list=PLOOwSORhCX7bpu1EetA1IsRYshXxTb3pj">HERE</a></b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The original novelette finds five
men at their club: The Chemist, The Doctor, The Banker, The Big Business Man
and The Very Young Man (this is how Cummings refers to them throughout, though
he eventually does reveal their names). By sing a super-high-powered
microscope, The Chemist has discovered that there are worlds within worlds and
habitated universes within the very atoms of everything that makes up our
world. He has also developed chemicals that will allow him to shrink and
enlarge, so he can visit the universe he has discovered within the atoms of his
mother’s golden wedding ring. In other words, Cummings was there first with the
idea that sparked the plots for countless comic books and movies later on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">In the first part of the original novelette, The Chemist visits the Golden
Atom, falls in love with the beautiful girl he spied on there and assists her
people in a war with an enemy city-state. He does this by growing to giant size
and stomping on the enemy army. Since The Chemist decides not to return to his
world, The Doctor, The Big Business Man and The Very Young Man eventually use
the chemicals he left behind to follow him into the Golden Atom. There they
find The Chemist, a revolution, excitement, danger and romance, along with a lot
of shrinking to hide from enemies and growing to giant size to stomp them. (There’s
a lot of stomping, both deliberate and accidental, which at times provides some
rather bizarre humor.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The first half of the book is pretty slow, where the characters walk around,
look at things and talk about the history, geography and social customs of the
world in which they’ve found themselves. There’s also a lot of
pseudo-scientific discussion about the whole shrinking process. In the second
half of the book, the revolution gets underway and the whole thing turns into a
colorful, violent, fast-paced adventure that fits pretty well into the
sword-and-planet sub-genre of science fiction.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">As a
writer of primarily science-fiction, Cummings produced some 750 novels and
short stories using the pen names Ray King, Gabrielle Cummings and Gabriel
Wilson. Most of his stories appeared in the pulp science-fiction magazines such
as </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Amazing Stories</i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> and </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Astonishing Stories</i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> during
the 1930s and 1940s. He is perhaps best remembered for his novel "The Girl
in the Golden Atom" (1922), which has become a science-fiction
classic. His other works include "The Man Who Mastered
Time" (1924), "Explorers Into Infinity" (1927),
"Beyond the Stars" (1928), "The Snow
Girl" (1929), "The Sea Girl" (1930), "The Exile
of Time" (1931) and "The Insect Invasion" (1932).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">During the
1940s, with his fiction career in eclipse, Cummings anonymously scripted comic
book stories for</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Timely Comics</i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">,
the predecessor to</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Marvel
Comics</i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">. He recycled the plot of "The Girl in the Golden Atom" for
a two-part</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Captain America</i><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">tale, "Princess of the Atom."
(</span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Captain America</i><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">#25 &
26). He also contributed to the "Human Torch"
and "Sub-Mariner," which his daughter Betty Cummings also wrote.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-44191822477327559302013-02-22T11:21:00.001-05:002014-03-09T18:41:22.909-04:00Erle Cox (1873-1950)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Erle Cox, son of Ross Cox and Mary Haskell, was born at Emerald Hill, Melbourne, Australia on 15 Aug 1873. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1901 he married Mary Ellen Kilbourn with whom he had one son and two daughters. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He retired due to ill health in Aug 1950 and died the following 20 Nov at his home in Elsternwick.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cox's first published stories appeared in the <i>Lone Hand</i> in 1908 and 1909. In 1918 he won a <i>Bulletin</i> competition for a four-line epitaph on a fallen soldier. Regular contributions to The Passing Show column in the Melbourne <i>Argus</i> led in 1921 to a post on the editorial staff.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZGpEqcQW8GQfdMe_Uy-rbTW_Vps9BJaYA2sJjloPGwXhPFQ4OON2mqa6gXfDRCWmI0MhKtfSGF70PjmyqyK2FgY5Izey_GGgmTlCRJQIMlLmNDkn2T2H90WmyCaY2fmM2CkLTMGts1T0/s1600/Out+of+the+Silence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZGpEqcQW8GQfdMe_Uy-rbTW_Vps9BJaYA2sJjloPGwXhPFQ4OON2mqa6gXfDRCWmI0MhKtfSGF70PjmyqyK2FgY5Izey_GGgmTlCRJQIMlLmNDkn2T2H90WmyCaY2fmM2CkLTMGts1T0/s1600/Out+of+the+Silence.jpg" height="200" width="140" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> His main claim to fame is his novel "Out of the Silence," a classic work of science fiction. Set in rural Australia, it tells the story of a young vigneron who discovers, buried beneath his land, a huge sphere containing the culture and technology of a past civilization. Cox began to write the book about 1916 but had shaped the idea for it earlier—'pacing up and down the St. Kilda sands'. At first he was unable to find a publisher, but in 1919 the <i>Argus</i> printed the story in weekly installments between 19 April and 25 October. It created extraordinary interest: 'No more successful serial story has been published in Australia' claimed the <i>Australasian</i> in 1925, heralding its appearance in Melbourne in book form. That year it was also published in London and, in 1928, in New York. American reviewers placed it alongside the works of Jules Verne and Rider Haggard. A new edition appeared in 1932; in 1934 the <i>Argus</i> published a picture-strip version and 3DB broadcast the story as a 25-part serial. Two more editions were published: one in 1947 with a prologue added, and in 1974 a French translation entitled "La sphére d'or."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-16674721503413613822013-02-22T11:21:00.000-05:002014-03-09T18:41:40.125-04:00Frona Eunice Wait Colburn (1859-1946)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eunice Sophronia "Frona" Smith was born in Midland, CA on 19 Aug 1859. She died in Washington, DC in 1946.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1875 she married John Courtland Waite with whom she had two children: Myraetta & Bessie After the death of their son Sylvester in 1880, she left her husband and began to work, getting her first job with the <i>Santa Rosa Republican</i> newspaper and learning the writing and publishing trade.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1887 she went to work for the San Francisco Examiner as one of the two female staff journalists. She soon rose to associate editor for the Overland Monthly. (Before editing for the Overland Monthly, she wrote articles for it.) </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzzmhllWSuyrFXIqEGr3FavCOzzp-zZJOHCuOmEfmNjO98joM1gpyexYkVOikc3-cRgal_bX-Kbu4ypPY1zecZI_QJPwZVGEaZ_18LJdZZqL2XShTm5BIGD_6HArcCEo8yFaCxyNHWT1o/s1600/Yermah.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzzmhllWSuyrFXIqEGr3FavCOzzp-zZJOHCuOmEfmNjO98joM1gpyexYkVOikc3-cRgal_bX-Kbu4ypPY1zecZI_QJPwZVGEaZ_18LJdZZqL2XShTm5BIGD_6HArcCEo8yFaCxyNHWT1o/s1600/Yermah.jpg" height="200" width="132" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although most of her books fall firmly into non-fiction areas like wine tasting and history, Eunice wrote one book that is often sold as an early work of science fiction. "<a href="https://archive.org/details/yermahdoradostor00waitiala">Yermah the Dorado</a>" is an adventure story about a lost race, in a place that will become San Francisco 11,000 years later. She published the book originally in 1897. After seeing the effects of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake she made changes to the book. In her reprint of the book, the author called her book "Yermah the Dorado - pre-vision of what is to be".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Though sold as science fiction, there has been an argument about whether many Victorian era books meet its definition. Darko Suvin argues that the book is not science fiction because it lacks a distinct science-fiction narrative throughout the book.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-80834910951309416532013-02-19T11:25:00.000-05:002014-03-09T18:42:00.244-04:00Camille Flammarion (1842-1925)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDCKMn-xrIzpyHYKToeBuScII78bFiVmK2TydKb-paWISa0hzj98DYOzyKmGWsp6Di3u__ruevHKse3ejlL15iLV4rW7EWq0q7DSm_a2ywtXA8413TA8lENKJAh2FcJ0xYdfQhjsyhvSs/s1600/Flammarion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDCKMn-xrIzpyHYKToeBuScII78bFiVmK2TydKb-paWISa0hzj98DYOzyKmGWsp6Di3u__ruevHKse3ejlL15iLV4rW7EWq0q7DSm_a2ywtXA8413TA8lENKJAh2FcJ0xYdfQhjsyhvSs/s1600/Flammarion.jpg" height="200" width="155" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nicolas Camille Flammarion, son of x and x, was born in Montigny-le-Roi, Haute-Marne, France on 26 Feb 1842. He died in x on 3 Jun 1925. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He married twice: To Sylvie Petiaux-Hugo and Gabrielle Renaudot (also a noted stronomer). with whom he had x children:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Flammarion was a prolific author of more than 50 titles, including popular science works about astronomy, several notable early science fiction novels and works on psychical research and related topics. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He also published the magazine </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">L'Astronomie </i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">starting in 1882 and maintained a private observatory at </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Juvisy-sur-Orge</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, France.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In "Real and Imaginary Worlds" (1864) and "Lumen" (1887), he describes a range of exotic species, including sentient plants which combine the processes of digestion and respiration. His psychical studies also influenced some of his science fiction, where he would write about his beliefs in a cosmic version of metempsychosis. In "Lumen", a human character meets the soul of an alien, able to cross the universe faster than light, that has been reincarnated on many different worlds, each with their own gallery of organisms and their evolutionary history. Other than that, his writing about other worlds adhered fairly closely to then current ideas in evolutionary theory and astronomy. Among other things, he believed that all planets went through more or less the same stages of development, but at different rates depending on their sizes.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammarion_engraving">The Flammarion Engraving</a></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Flammarion Engraving is a wood engraving by an unknown artist, so named because its first documented appearance is in Flammarion's 1888 book "L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire (The Atmosphere Popular Meteorology)." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1907, he wrote that he believed dwellers on Mars had tried to communicate with the Earth in the past. He also believed in 1907 that a seven-tailed comet was heading toward Earth. In 1910, for the appearance of Halley's Comet, he believed the gas from the comet’s tail "would impregnate [the Earth’s] atmosphere and possibly snuff out all life on the planet."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Quotes</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />"What intelligent being, what being capable of responding emotionally to a beautiful sight, can look at the jagged, silvery lunar crescent trembling in the azure sky, even through the weakest of telescopes, and not be struck by it in an intensely pleasurable way, not feel cut off from everyday life here on earth and transported toward that first stop on the celestial journeys? What thoughtful soul could look at brilliant Jupiter with its four attendant satellites, or splendid Saturn encircled by its mysterious ring, or a double star glowing scarlet and sapphire in the infinity of night, and not be filled with a sense of wonder? Yes, indeed, if humankind — from humble farmers in the fields and toiling workers in the cities to teachers, people of independent means, those who have reached the pinnacle of fame or fortune, even the most frivolous of society women — if they knew what profound inner pleasure await those who gaze at the heavens, then France, nay, the whole of Europe, would be covered with telescopes instead of bayonets, thereby promoting universal happiness and peace." ~ <i>Camille Flammarion (1880)</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i>"This end of the world will occur without noise, without revolution, without cataclysm. Just as a tree loses leaves in the autumn wind, so the earth will see in succession the falling and perishing all its children, and in this eternal winter, which will envelop it from then on, she can no longer hope for either a new sun or a new spring. She will purge herself of the history of the worlds. The millions or billions of centuries that she had seen will be like a day. It will be only a detail completely insignificant in the whole of the universe. Presently the earth is only an invisible point among all the stars, because, at this distance, it is lost through its infinite smallness in the vicinity of the sun, which itself is by far only a small star. In the future, when the end of things will arrive on this earth, the event will then pass completely unperceived in the universe. The stars will continue to shine after the extinction of our sun, as they already shone before our existence. When there will no longer be on the earth a sole concern to contemplate, the constellations will reign again in the noise as they reigned before the appearance of man on this tiny globule. There are stars whose light shone some millions of years before we arrived … The luminous rays that we receive actually then departed from their bosom before the time of the appearance of man on the earth. The universe is so immense that it appears immutable, and that the duration of a planet such as that of the earth is only a chapter, less than that, a phrase, less still, only a word of the universe’s history." ~ <i>Camille Flammarion, La Fin du Monde (The End of the World)</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-31799463352988204582013-02-18T20:27:00.000-05:002014-03-09T18:42:10.476-04:00Hugo Gernsback (1884-1967)<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hugo Gernsbacher was born in Bonnevoie, Luxembourg on 16 Aug 1884 and died in New York City on 19 Aug 1967. The son of a vintner, he married three times: Rose Harvey (1906) with whom he had two children: Madelon and Marcellus Harvey; Dorothy Kantrowitz (1921) with whom he had three children: Bernett, Bertina and Jocelyn; and Mary Hancher (1951).</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1925, Hugo founded radio station<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">WRNY</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>which broadcast from the 18th floor of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Roosevelt Hotel</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>in New York City and was involved in the first television broadcasts. He is also considered a pioneer in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">amateur radio</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Before helping to create science fiction, Gernsback was an entrepreneur in the electronics industry, importing radio parts from Europe to the United States and helping to popularize amateur "wireless." In April 1908 he founded<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Modern Electrics</i>, the world's first magazine about both electronics and radio, called "wireless" at the time. While the cover of the magazine itself contends it was a catalog, most historians note that it contained articles, features and plotlines, qualifying it as a magazine.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Under its auspices, in January 1909, he founded the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Wireless Association of America</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, which had 10,000 members within a year.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhujX1CwCYnXxIV2RjjEgpRDLzYgW0279zkcyfGw-e4itDl2gGT3YltMpopFbosIQPhUVMWjR7bO3CidW-7cSme3rG6S2L0Ep9AVnb5DqUpvL23gj5-suSSvUPtNToxQNLMNTP__mORglo/s1600/April+1911.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhujX1CwCYnXxIV2RjjEgpRDLzYgW0279zkcyfGw-e4itDl2gGT3YltMpopFbosIQPhUVMWjR7bO3CidW-7cSme3rG6S2L0Ep9AVnb5DqUpvL23gj5-suSSvUPtNToxQNLMNTP__mORglo/s1600/April+1911.jpg" height="236" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1912, Gernsback said that he estimated 400,000 people in the U.S. were involved in amateur radio. In 1913, he founded a similar magazine,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Electrical Experimenter</i>, which became<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Science and Invention</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>in 1920. It was in these magazines that he began including scientific fiction stories alongside science journalism—including his own novel "Ralph 124C 41+"<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>which he ran for 12 months from April 1911 in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Modern Electrics.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His contributions to the genre were so significant that, along with H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, he is sometimes called "The Father of Science Fiction."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Found at <a href="http://arstechnica.com/">http://arstechnica.com</a></span><br />
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<header style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #263034; display: block; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 14px/normal Arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><h1 class="heading" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; color: #263034; font-family: NoticiaBold, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 30px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">
The man who foresaw science fiction</h1>
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The first centennial of one of the worst science fiction novels in history is ...</h2>
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by<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://arstechnica.com/author/matthew-lasar/" rel="author" style="color: #4f525a; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Matthew Lasar</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>-<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="date" data-time="1272892800" title="Mon May 03 2010 09:20:00 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)">May 3 2010, 9:20am EDT</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrO1evJFNMSS8013jFTGwsO5HT_Ak1auQCLLNmAfiRnj6_V1jkPyHSGh3-zjMIdk_FTRmxRI6Nj5wv3OEUjFFIXZeF-tTRqYI04Q8X6JzM2jDV7827oriJ_Q5IlHNLIvpvoQBB-T_nz2A/s1600/Gernsback+with+his+TV+glasses+in+1963.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrO1evJFNMSS8013jFTGwsO5HT_Ak1auQCLLNmAfiRnj6_V1jkPyHSGh3-zjMIdk_FTRmxRI6Nj5wv3OEUjFFIXZeF-tTRqYI04Q8X6JzM2jDV7827oriJ_Q5IlHNLIvpvoQBB-T_nz2A/s1600/Gernsback+with+his+TV+glasses+in+1963.jpg" height="242" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #4f525a; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Hugo Gernsback wearing his TV Glasses in 1963 Life magazine shoot.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">It is September 1, 2660,
and a genius sits in his study, resting up prior to a remarkable display of his
scientific prowess. Tomorrow he will demonstrate to scientists that a dog three
years technically dead, but preserved with rare elements, can be resuscitated
back to life by a simple blood transfusion. He stretches, revealing a huge
frame, much taller than the average human, his height approaching that of
extraterrestrials.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">"His physical
superiority, however, was as nothing compared to his gigantic mind,"
explained his biographer. "He was Ralph 124C 41+, one of the greatest
living scientists and one of the ten men on the whole planet earth permitted to
use the Plus sign after his name."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">So begins Hugo
Gernsback's nearly century-old novel, “Ralph 124C 41+”: A Romance of the
Year 2660. First published in serial form in April 1911 in his magazine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Modern Electrics</i>, it was the magnum opus
of the man who popularized the term "science fiction," and in whose
name the Hugo Awards are given to writers to this day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitsGiDfXiEq1Ta4FV5sejKFHvZ4l8MzXqTFyeX-7uJRfVJYJycGTNHBCOxaFpT-2Mqt98v67x6XY_OY0eNfUqiVkwftFW9W20IaxlXlf7vbKBqetPDEBJtaPfHxEtDXb-VDpdHzF7g0Lk/s1600/Modern+Electrics.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitsGiDfXiEq1Ta4FV5sejKFHvZ4l8MzXqTFyeX-7uJRfVJYJycGTNHBCOxaFpT-2Mqt98v67x6XY_OY0eNfUqiVkwftFW9W20IaxlXlf7vbKBqetPDEBJtaPfHxEtDXb-VDpdHzF7g0Lk/s1600/Modern+Electrics.jpg" height="320" width="218" /></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">And romantic it is. No
sooner does Gernsback introduce us to Ralph than he has his hero rescuing the
girl of his dreams, Alice 212B423 of Switzerland, from a snow avalanche via
high powered radio signals—she pleading for his help over a wireless video
screen from 4,000 miles away. The novel ends (spoiler alert) with the scientist
jetting around the solar system to save her from a lovesick Martian named
Llysanohr' (that apostrophe is not a typo). She revives following the
application of his blood transfusion technique to her traumatized body.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">"Dearest,"
Alice declares upon awakening. "I have just found out what your name
really means... ONE TO FORESEE FOR ONE."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Indeed, Ralph's creator
took it upon himself to foresee for everyone. Gernsback's novel is a gradually
exhausting cavalcade of canny technological predictions—among them video
conferencing, social networking, electrical cars, radar, solar power and
microfilm. Add to the list some that thankfully haven't been attempted, the
"subatlantic tube" among them: "a 3,470-mile underground train
system that connects New York and Brest, France, in a direct line through the
earth's crust."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Despite all this, few
sci-fi fans take “Ralph 124C 41+” seriously today. "Thoroughly
deficient as fiction," Gernsback's entry in American National
Biography categorically declares. And that is one of the kinder
remembrances. "One of the worst disasters ever to hit the science fiction
field," acclaimed novelist Brian W. Aldiss wrote of Gernsback in 1973.
"He created dangerous precedents which many later editors in the field
followed."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">But as the scholar Gary
Westfahl points out, Gernsback, for all his flaws, was one of, if not the first
writer to pointedly ponder a question relevant to this day. What is science
fiction for?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Smitten
by Mars</span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">He was born Hugo
Gernsbacher in 1884, the son of a Luxembourg wine wholesaler who hired private
tutors to educate the boy. At the age of nine, somebody gave Hugo a copy of the
American astronomer Percival Lowell's controversial book “Mars as the
Abode of Life.” Apparently it made quite an impression. "He was
immediately sent home, where he lapsed into delirium," writes science
fiction historian Sam Moskowitz, "raving about strange creatures,
fantastic cities and masterly engineered canals of Mars for two full days and
nights while a doctor remained in almost constant attendance."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRJodOrQ9-8OYASrY3TjjwanxQUBWuWCjetg4JvJ6xeG1DIRIX-qYlYlwoeUP7muEGIt286MXkMtA3VlgNrMFqsV_ORJXBdejAxEdyeQOwZ5KsVQUdUQHuasTJxgWI0BAd9rOiADUAFxw/s1600/Amzaing+Stories+Quarterly.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRJodOrQ9-8OYASrY3TjjwanxQUBWuWCjetg4JvJ6xeG1DIRIX-qYlYlwoeUP7muEGIt286MXkMtA3VlgNrMFqsV_ORJXBdejAxEdyeQOwZ5KsVQUdUQHuasTJxgWI0BAd9rOiADUAFxw/s1600/Amzaing+Stories+Quarterly.jpg" height="320" width="234" /></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">No surprise then that,
upon recovery, the boy glommed onto the burgeoning field of electronics. By his
late teens he was applying for patents on his own inventions, most notably a
battery for electrical devices. When government offices in Germany and France
turned his applications down, he migrated to the United States, where Hugo
now-Gernsback blundered through a series of engineering jobs and startups, all
of which quickly collapsed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Finally he made a splash
with what Moskowitz calls "the first home radio set in history."
Gernsback's Telimco Wireless didn't receive the signals of any broadcast radio
stations, since there were almost none before 1920. But it did ring a
bell in an adjacent room without any connecting wires. Such was the sensation
the device made that local police demanded a demonstration, following up on a
fraud complaint. Satisfied that it worked, the Telimco was subsequently sold in
many department stores—that is, until the first World War, when the government
banned amateur wireless transmission. This reduced its inventor to marketing
the gadget as a kit for electrical experiments.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">In the end, none of
Gernsback's mechanical innovations got very far. But the magazines he launched
to promote them did. The first of these was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Modern Electrics</i>, begun as a catalogue of his products in 1908.
This was followed by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Amazing Stories</i> in
1926, and a slew of others that came and went, among them <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Air Wonder Stories</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Science Wonder Stories</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scientific Detective Monthly</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Cold
facts</span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">It was in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Amazing Stories</i> that Gernsback
first tried to nail down the science fiction idea. "Scientifiction"
he initially called it—"charming romance intermingled with scientific fact
and prophetic vision." The magazine's masthead went further:
"Extravagant Fiction Today—Cold Fact Tomorrow." Gernsback even
boasted that he had researchers fact check the technical validity of the stories
he published. So many readers wrote into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Amazing Stories</i> that he reserved a large
"discussions" section of his magazine for comments—the first of the
many thousands of forums that empower the science fiction community to this
day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">But the notion that
sci-fi's purpose was to predict the technological future eventually drew
passionate opposition from some of the genre's greatest pens. Six years after
Gernsback's death in 1967, Brian Aldiss went after the entrepreneur's emphasis
on scientism with a vengeance. "Science fiction is no more written for
scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts," remains one of
Aldiss' most famous quotes. As for Gernsback's philosophy, it had "the
effect of introducing a deadening literalism into the fiction," he charged
in his history of the genre, Billion Year Spree. "As long as the
stories were built like diagrams, and made clear like diagrams, and stripped of
atmosphere and sensibility, then it did not seem to matter how silly the
'science' or the psychology was."</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfkMy4QH_yLhCs3ONsU1zSRLOXspdxHh-ftf_E-QPRP0YfDyM1xWMP3aGqzvugzwlBInsM4USmu5Aw8rpk_aUqwDQx2rfVIQggjczwrzsYBu_xlnFxOsMmosgCYhznQVlZLdlsEGiftfQ/s1600/Hugo+watching+a+1.5+inch+tv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfkMy4QH_yLhCs3ONsU1zSRLOXspdxHh-ftf_E-QPRP0YfDyM1xWMP3aGqzvugzwlBInsM4USmu5Aw8rpk_aUqwDQx2rfVIQggjczwrzsYBu_xlnFxOsMmosgCYhznQVlZLdlsEGiftfQ/s1600/Hugo+watching+a+1.5+inch+tv.jpg" height="162" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #263034; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; text-align: center; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Hugo Gernsback watching a 1.5 inch square television in August 1928. </span></span><br />
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #263034; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; text-align: center; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image from his magazine, <em>Radio News</em>.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">This seems a little
unfair to the author of “Ralph 124C 41+,” but taking Gernsback more
seriously as a philosopher also has its risks. There's something a bit scary
about Ralph's future, with its world government, scientist-as-god
overtones. It's unclear why, in Gernsback's vision, Martians and humans are
forbidden to marry. But the notion fits in with one of the less attractive
aspects of the Progressive Era: its faith in segregation and
"scientific" racism. As late as 1963, one of Gernsback's last publications, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Forecast</i>, argued that
"chemi-geneticists" could alter the enzymes of African-Americans,
allowing them to have white children.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Of course anyone wanting
contemporary assumptions from a writer who was born in 1884 is asking for a
lot. But the public today expects a very different kind of science fiction than
the kind that Gernsback delivered. We're less interested in fiction writers who
can augur what's looming over the technological horizon—there's a veritable
army of nonfiction "futurists" who do that now. We're much more
interested in sci-fi as literature, offering compelling visions of imaginary
times and places as metaphors for our own, or just as fun cosmologies to enjoy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Still, our greatest
contemporary writers pay homage to Gernsback's vision. An early William Gibson
story titled "The Gernsback Continuum" remembers the
substance and style of his world, albeit with irony.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">"...as I made the
stations of her convoluted socioarchitectural cross in my red Toyota as I
gradually tuned in to her image of a shadowy America-that-wasn't, of Coca-Cola
plants like beached submarines, and fifth-run movie houses like the temples of
some lost sect that had worshiped blue mirrors and geometry. And as I moved
among these secret ruins, I found myself wondering what the inhabitants of that
lost future would think of the world I lived in. The Thirties dreamed white
marble and slipstream chrome, immortal crystal and burnished bronze, but the
rockets on the covers of the Gernsback pulps had fallen on London in the dead
of night, screaming. After the war, everyone had a car—no wings for it—and the
promised superhighway to drive it down, so that the sky itself darkened, and
the fumes ate the marble and pitted the miracle crystal."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">In Gibson's novels, the
perfect technological future which Gernsback foresaw is long abandoned. Yet as
the first centennial of “Ralph 124C 41+” approaches, the literary
form that its author championed thrives, perhaps even beyond Gernsback's own
dreams. Hugo Gernsback "originated the idea" of sci-fi, Gary Westfahl
writes. "He uniquely realized that various and present works were in fact
part of a single genre." He named that genre, Westfahl adds, and persuaded
the world to accept its existence. "It is for those accomplishments, not
any innovative qualities in the stories he published, that Gernsback should be
celebrated as the founder of science fiction."<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPMCkb-mbTHNorWGufy4b36A5DrlZNuIUFuMhPpuSI2YHGwJ6QeiXvpLcdAhYkQZG9lUR1KIShsUabAflN2F4AgjZcERf7SvA_hyphenhyphensx5mRJPQsPqxeE6AMmrwG2inTqhjCmbxTvBpw2fn8/s1600/SciFi+Graphic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPMCkb-mbTHNorWGufy4b36A5DrlZNuIUFuMhPpuSI2YHGwJ6QeiXvpLcdAhYkQZG9lUR1KIShsUabAflN2F4AgjZcERf7SvA_hyphenhyphensx5mRJPQsPqxeE6AMmrwG2inTqhjCmbxTvBpw2fn8/s1600/SciFi+Graphic.jpg" height="92" width="200" /></a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-16033090964640788812013-02-18T11:25:00.000-05:002014-03-09T18:42:20.614-04:00George Griffith (1857-1906)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYjDSFcCPrGsFhd_MwIVM0DkbVYQQ2PayuQ6LFJVKBiWYxnwUtD_pvdhZHaRk_AVyKBEzP5aCBd-x2qIlXc4NMKlHMJlHVrwftSXAhTJPjaAG7pGINHPbpyIHHrxtbU8nyJg8wWPuHALs/s1600/George+Griffith.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYjDSFcCPrGsFhd_MwIVM0DkbVYQQ2PayuQ6LFJVKBiWYxnwUtD_pvdhZHaRk_AVyKBEzP5aCBd-x2qIlXc4NMKlHMJlHVrwftSXAhTJPjaAG7pGINHPbpyIHHrxtbU8nyJg8wWPuHALs/s1600/George+Griffith.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">George Griffith, son of a vicar, was born in 1857 and died in 1906. He was a prolific British</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> explorer who wrote during the late Victorian and Edwardian age. His son, Alan Arnold Griffith, was the inventor of the Rolls-Royce Avon jet engine.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many of his visionary tales appeared in magazines such as <i>Pearson's Magazine</i> and <i>Pearson's Weekly</i> before being published as novels. Griffith was extremely popular in the United Kingdom, though he failed to find similar acclaim in the United States, in part due to his revolutionary and socialist views. A journalist, rather than scientist, by background, what his stories lack in scientific rigour and literary grace they make up for in sheer exuberance of execution.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although overshadowed by H. G. Wells in the United States, Griffith's epic fantasies of romantic utopians in a future world of war, dominated by airship battle fleets, and grandiose engineering provided a template for steampunk novels a century before the term was coined. Michael Moorcock claims that the works of George Griffith had a dramatic impact on his own writing. The concept of revolutionaries imposing "a pax aeronautica over the earth", at the center of "Angel of the Revolution," was taken up by Wells many years later, in "The Shape of Things to Come." Wells himself once wrote that Griffith's "Outlaws of the Air" was an "aeronautical masterpiece."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Though a less accomplished writer than Upton Sinclair, George Bernard Shaw, and H.G. Wells, his novels were extremely popular in their day, seeing many printings. Griffith's stories foreshadowed World War I and foretold a utopian communist revolution in the United States [which ones?]. It also predicted that Great Britain would ally itself with Germany against a Franco-Russian-Italian alliance, almost the exact opposite of what actually happened when World War I started. Griffith also employed the concepts of the air to surface missile and VTOL aircraft. He wrote several tales of adventure set on contemporary earth, while The Outlaws of the Air depicted a future of aerial warfare and the creation of a Pacific island utopia. Sam Moskowitz described him as "undeniably the most popular science fiction writer in England between 1893 and 1895." Some of his books (especially "The Gold Finder") reflected a belief in the undesirability of racial mixing, due to a supposed deficiency in the black race. These beliefs were similar to those of some other socialists of the time, such as Jack London.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNiqIxFbdxv3_uA_WPCPo3yw3GuFTmEaMzvb-LHREdQSWVzXOrA5BnJi3ufXeshOfqu2OrbJGKhIl4zH0nFBGNxUCHRgfp0ow91qRvjsxbzY_Fhb8DZsz7Y-QGph7sp4a5pYY9rRpbKb0/s1600/Around+the+world.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNiqIxFbdxv3_uA_WPCPo3yw3GuFTmEaMzvb-LHREdQSWVzXOrA5BnJi3ufXeshOfqu2OrbJGKhIl4zH0nFBGNxUCHRgfp0ow91qRvjsxbzY_Fhb8DZsz7Y-QGph7sp4a5pYY9rRpbKb0/s1600/Around+the+world.jpg" height="320" width="191" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His science fiction depicted grand and unlikely voyages through our solar system in the spirit of Wells or Jules Verne, though his explorers donned space suits remarkably prescient in their design. "</span><a href="http://arthursclassicnovels.com/sci-fi/griffith/A%20Honeymoon%20in%20Space-h.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Honeymoon in Space</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">" saw his newly married adventurers exploring planets in different stages of geological and Darwinian evolution on an educational odyssey which drew heavily on earlier cosmic voyages by Camille Flammarion, W. S. Lach-Szyrma and Edgar Fawcett. Its illustrations by </span><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Honeymoon+in+Space&hl=en&qscrl=1&rlz=1T4GZGN_enUS515US516&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=JQAaU7G6G-ag0QHE7ICgBg&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1536&bih=722#hl=en&q=%22Honeymoon+in+Space%22+%2B+%22George+Griffith%22&qscrl=1&tbm=isch" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stanley L. Wood</a><span id="goog_1627990494" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><span id="goog_1627990495" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> have proved more significant, providing the first depictions of slender, super intelligent aliens with large, bald heads — the archetype of the famous Greys of modern science fiction. His short story The Great Crellin Comet, published in 1897, was the first story to not only include a ten second countdown for a space launch, but also the first story to suggest that a comet's collision with the earth could be stopped by human intervention.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As an explorer of the real world he shattered the existing record for voyaging around the world at the behest of Sir Arthur Pearson, completing his journey in just 65 days. He also helped discover the source of the Amazon river. This was documented in <i>Pearson's Magazine </i>before being published as a book, "Around the World in 65 Days". </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-29729904622035361792013-02-17T20:35:00.000-05:002014-03-09T18:42:52.218-04:00Thea von Harbou (1888-1954)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHeFphqK_gXF_9ITOStiTwfFwIzBfZFfawRiYKvOoghinibHxk69TIeMp2GwzRiC_RGeVa-HSVAKrAgqskcL52KV0zyXAh6IG8eXi0QqBSrlLom332-vINzf5oL53J2rTKb3v25QpB6s4/s1600/Thea.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHeFphqK_gXF_9ITOStiTwfFwIzBfZFfawRiYKvOoghinibHxk69TIeMp2GwzRiC_RGeVa-HSVAKrAgqskcL52KV0zyXAh6IG8eXi0QqBSrlLom332-vINzf5oL53J2rTKb3v25QpB6s4/s1600/Thea.png" height="200" width="122" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thea Babriele von Harbou, daughter of a Prussian family of minor nobility, was born in Tauperlitz, Germany on 27 Dec 1888. She died in Berlin, Germany on 1 Jul 1954. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After her writing debut in 1906, von Harbou met Rudolf Klein-Rogge, and later married him in 1914. By 1917, they moved to Berlin where she was devoted, full-time, to building her career as a writer; she was drawn to writing epic myths and legends with an overtly nationalistic tone. In the words of Patrick McGilligan, a Fritz Lang historian, "Her novels became patriotic and morale-boosting, urging women to sacrifice and duty while promoting the eternal glory of the fatherland". </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thea's first close interaction with cinema came when German director Joe May chose to adapt one of her writings, "Die heilige Simplizia." From that moment on, "Her fiction output slowed down. In short order she would become one of Germany's most celebrated film writers, not only because of her partnership with Fritz Lang, but also for writing scripts for F. W. Murnau, Carl Dreyer, E. A. Dupont, and other German luminaries".</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJFn8N7603fWqqfM6OU12FxoUch3DX4D5rZiFDoiiDA6yNwTvcjoa4ALg9TRvxFabD1nsUW5AyF5AZv2qBMRUymg8e4wdCpSfErBlzx3JXaETyMgUxtPM5IeW5xrFGMFG1GX7ypt7hFG8/s1600/Lang&Thea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJFn8N7603fWqqfM6OU12FxoUch3DX4D5rZiFDoiiDA6yNwTvcjoa4ALg9TRvxFabD1nsUW5AyF5AZv2qBMRUymg8e4wdCpSfErBlzx3JXaETyMgUxtPM5IeW5xrFGMFG1GX7ypt7hFG8/s1600/Lang&Thea.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou in<br />their Berlin flat, 1923 or 1924</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Her first collaboration with Fritz Lang was marked by a common interest in the exotic foreign land of India. As von Harbou worked on an adaptation of her 1917 novel "Das indische Grabmal" (The Indian Tomb), Joe May assigned Fritz Lang to aid her in the writing of the screenplay and the details regarding production. Her marriage to him came in 1922 with the success of "Dr. Mabuse der Spielr" and the death of Lang's first wife. The two went to work on a script that would echo pride for German nationality, "Die Nibelungen" and further raise von Harbou's esteem as a writer for the screen. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thea would often take her screenplays and make them into full length novels to coincide with the release of the film, however this was not the case with <i><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Thea+Von+Harbou&rlz=1T4GZGN_enUS515US516&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=qn0cU7XjAajA0AG7rICwDQ&ved=0CLIBEIke&biw=761&bih=639#q=%22Metropolis%22&tbm=isch&imgdii=_">Metropolis</a></i>, one of her most famous works. She was an incredibly active player in producing <i>Metropolis</i>, and this epic film became not only one of Fritz Lang's best known films, but one of significance to German cinema. Besides writing the novel, the screenplay, and developing the distinct moral ending of <i>Metropolis</i>, she is credited with discovering Gustav Fröhlich, who plays the lead role of Freder Fredersen.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqR9tpUDLc5ctWWVl4_poY5g9qNhqIOPYCR3sHkLyigpqaELgaXo04Z1nirR4yITgp0wldeT8A4c4JB-wu01qjoMg4YFI7dtge5JS_GwiZU-buDZ2W9tJ5h0QIRRH8AQaab_7-0dZAEGw/s1600/Metropolis+Clock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqR9tpUDLc5ctWWVl4_poY5g9qNhqIOPYCR3sHkLyigpqaELgaXo04Z1nirR4yITgp0wldeT8A4c4JB-wu01qjoMg4YFI7dtge5JS_GwiZU-buDZ2W9tJ5h0QIRRH8AQaab_7-0dZAEGw/s1600/Metropolis+Clock.jpg" height="156" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Click <b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q030WNZvXrA">HERE </a></b>for the<br /><i>Metropolis </i>Clock Scene</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Metropolis</i> takes place in the future, and mirrors the meticulously regimented day of the underground workers. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the clock scene, we see Freder, the protagonist, taking on an arduous and monotonous 10 hour shift working on the clock.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This film had so many intertwining messages for future decades that it's almost on par now with the predictions of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. While many of the themes in the film also refer to the dangers of repeating the past (a new Tower of Babel gets built and subsequently destroyed due to a war of the social classes), th</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">e bizarre technology predicted in its vision of the future is quite startling.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Her next big production with Fritz Lang would be </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">M</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, a film about a child murderer, and would be written with incredible attention to accuracy. They had been enthralled with news coverage of Peter Kürten, known</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> as the Monster of Düsseldorf, during the late 1920s. Not only did von Harbou use newspaper articles for the script, but she "maintained regular contact with the police headquarters on Alexanderplatz and was permitted access to the communications and secret publications of Berlin's force".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Recalling the script, von Harbou's secretary, Hilde Guttmann, claims, "I saw many other film manuscripts, but never one which could compare with the manuscript for M. Two typewriter ribbons were stuck together to give us three colors: one black and red, and the other blue. The camera work and the action were typed in black, the dialogue blue, and the sound , where synchronized, was typed in red". Unfortunately, she is uncredited as the script writer for <i>M</i>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thea's ability to write for the screen propelled silent German cinema into the spot light. Furthermore, behind the most well-known German directors sat Thea von Harbou writing the action. As Hitler rose to power, the German film industry became more influenced by propaganda-based ideology and Thea remained loyal to new political power. Around 1934, a year after the Nazi Party began leading the nation, Thea took the initiative to write and direct two films, <i>Hanneles Himmelfahrt</i> and <i>Elisabeth und der Narr</i>. However, she did not find the experience of directing to be satisfactory and remained a prolific scenarist during this time. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Under a regime where every film was a 'state film,' Thea von Harbou amassed writing credits on some 26 films, while giving uncredited assistance on countless others-including a handful with an indisputable National Socialist worldview".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After Thea's marriage to Lang ended in 1933, she married Ayi Tendulkar.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501081671790818867.post-62992612615811019392013-02-17T20:34:00.000-05:002014-03-09T11:40:02.696-04:00Metropolis (1927)<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/B4rI__TRvcY" width="459"></iframe><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com