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Speculative fiction umbrella phrase encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres , specifically science fiction , fantasy , horror , supernatural fiction , superhero fiction , utopian and dystopian fiction , apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction , and alternate history in literature as well as related static, motion, and virtual arts.
It has been around since humans began to speak. The earliest forms of speculative fiction were likely mythological tales told around the campfire. Speculative fiction deals with the "What if?" scenarios imagined by dreamers and thinkers worldwide. Journeys to other worlds through the vast reaches of distant space; magical quests to free worlds enslaved by terrible beings; malevolent supernatural powers seeking to increase their spheres of influence across multiple dimensions and times; all of these fall into the realm of speculative fiction.
Speculative fiction as a category ranges from ancient works to cutting edge , paradigm -changing, and neotraditional works of the 21st century. It can be recognized in works whose authors' intentions or the social contexts of the versions of stories they portrayed is now known. For example, Ancient Greek dramatists such as Euripides , whose play Medea (play) Athenian audiences when he fictionally speculated that shamaness Medea killed her own children instead of their being killed by other Corinthians after her departure. The play Hippolytus Aphrodite , is suspected to have displeased contemporary audiences of the day because it portrayed Phaedra as too lusty.
In historiography , what is now called speculative fiction has previously been termed "historical invention", "historical fiction ," and other similar names. It is extensively noted in the literary criticism of the works of William Shakespeare when he co-locates Athenian Duke Theseus and Amazonian Queen Hippolyta , English fairy Puck , and Roman god Cupid all together in the fairyland of its Merovingian Germanic sovereign Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream mythography it has been termed "mythopoesis" or mythopoeia , "fictional speculation", the creative design and generation of lore, regarding such works as J. R. R. Tolkien 's The Lord of the Rings supernatural , alternate history , and sexuality themes continue in works produced within the modern speculative fiction genre.
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Robert Ervin Howard pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. He created the character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre.
Howard was born and raised in
Texas . He spent most of his life in the town of
Cross Plains , with some time spent in nearby
Brownwood . A bookish and intellectual child, he was also a fan of
boxing , eventually taking up amateur boxing; he also spent some time in his late teens
bodybuilding . From the age of nine, he longed to become a writer of adventure fiction but did not have real success until he was 23. Thereafter, until his death by suicide at age 30, Howard's writings were published in a wide selection of magazines, journals, and newspapers, and he became proficient in several subgenres. His greatest success occurred after his death. (
Full article... )
BioShock is a 2007
first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Boston (later
Irrational Games ) and
2K Australia , and published by
2K . The first game in the
BioShock series, it was released for
Microsoft Windows and
Xbox 360 platforms in August 2007; a
PlayStation 3 port by Irrational,
2K Marin ,
2K Australia and
Digital Extremes was released in October 2008. The game follows player character Jack, who discovers the underwater city of
Rapture , built by business magnate
Andrew Ryan to be an isolated utopia. The discovery of ADAM, a genetic material which grants superhuman powers, initiated the city's turbulent decline. Jack attempts to escape Rapture, fighting its mutated and mechanical denizens, while engaging with the few sane survivors left and learning of the city's past. The player can defeat foes in several ways by using weapons, utilizing plasmids that give unique powers, and by turning Rapture's defenses against them.
BioShock ' s concept was developed by Irrational's creative lead, Ken Levine , and incorporates ideas by 20th century dystopian and utopian thinkers such as Ayn Rand , George Orwell , and Aldous Huxley , as well as historical figures such as John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Walt Disney . The game includes role-playing elements, giving the player different approaches in engaging enemies such as by stealth , as well as moral choices of saving or killing characters. Additionally, the game borrows concepts from the survival horror genre, notably the Resident Evil BioShock is considered a spiritual successor to the System Shock seriesFull article...
“
Science fiction is the search for a definition of man and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mould.
”
—
Brian Aldiss (b.1925),
Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science Fiction (1973).
William Wallace Denslow's illustration of the poem "The Queen of Hearts" from a 1901 issue of Mother Goose. William Wallace Denslow 's illustration of the poem "The Queen of Hearts Mother Goose playing card based poems, but proved to be far more popular than the others. By 1785 it had been set to music, and it forms the basis of the plot of Lewis Carroll 's Alice in Wonderland nursery rhyme . (POTD
First issue of Amazing Stories , art by Frank R. Paul . This copy was autographed by Hugo Gernsback in 1965. Amazing Stories science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback 's Experimenter Publishing . It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction . Science fiction stories had made regular appearances in other magazines, including some published by Gernsback, but Amazing helped define and launch a new genre of pulp fiction .
As of 2024,
[update] Amazing has been published, with some interruptions, for 98 years, going through a half-dozen owners and many editors as it struggled to be profitable. Gernsback was forced into bankruptcy and lost control of the magazine in 1929. In 1938 it was purchased by
Ziff-Davis , which hired
Raymond A. Palmer as editor. Palmer made the magazine successful though it was not regarded as a quality magazine within the science fiction community. In the late 1940s
Amazing presented as fact stories about the
Shaver Mystery , a lurid mythos that explained accidents and disaster as the work of robots named deros, which led to dramatically increased circulation but widespread ridicule.
Amazing switched to a
digest size format in 1953, shortly before the end of the pulp-magazine era. It was sold to Sol Cohen's Universal Publishing Company in 1965, which filled it with reprinted stories but did not pay a reprint fee to the authors, creating a conflict with the newly formed
Science Fiction Writers of America .
Ted White took over as editor in 1969, eliminated the reprints and made the magazine respected again:
Amazing was nominated for the prestigious
Hugo Award three times during his tenure in the 1970s. Several other owners attempted to create a modern incarnation of the magazine in the following decades, but publication was suspended after the March 2005 issue. A new incarnation appeared in July 2012 as an online magazine. Print publication resumed with the Fall 2018 issue. (
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April 22 :
Book releases
Film releases
Television series
Births
Deaths
2002 - Denis McLoughlin (b. 1918), a well-known British illustrator known for his hard-boiled detective illustrations and science fiction works
Possible events in the future as suggested by science fiction:
Dr. Robotnik seizes control in 3224 of the planet Mobius, the name of the former planet Earth .The Committee of Public Safety seizes power in Nouveau Paris and takes control of the government in 4007. Around the year 18,000,000, a "half-plastic denizen" of the interior of a planet beyond Pluto exchanges his mind with the Great Race of Yith.
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