Good Omens Plot summary[edit] It is the coming of the End Times: the Apocalypse is near, and Final Judgment will soon descend upon the human species. This comes as a bit of bad news to the angel Aziraphale (who was the guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden) and the demon Crowley (who, when he was originally named Crawly, was the serpent who tempted Eve to eat the apple), respectively the representatives of Heaven and Hell on Earth, as they have become used to living their cozy, comfortable lives and have, in a perverse way, taken a liking to humanity. Unfortunately, Warlock, the child everyone thinks is the Anti-Christ is, in fact, a perfectly normal eleven-year-old boy. Agnes Nutter was a witch in the 17th century and the only truly accurate prophet to have ever lived. Anathema teams up with Newton Pulsifer, the descendant of the man who initiated the burning of Agnes, to use the prophecies and find the Antichrist. Origins and authorship[edit] Neil Gaiman has said: Terry Pratchett has said:
Terry Goodkind Biography[edit] Goodkind was born in 1948,[1] and his home town was Omaha, Nebraska.[7] In 1983 Goodkind moved with his wife Jeri to a house he built in Maine, later making his residence on the coast of Lake Las Vegas, Nevada his primary home.[7] Goodkind has dyslexia, which initially dissuaded him from any interest in writing. Before starting his career as a writer, Goodkind built cabinets and violins and was a marine and wildlife artist,[7] selling his paintings in galleries.[3] In 1993, during the construction of his home on the forested Mount Desert Island off the coast of Maine with his wife Jeri, he began to write his first novel, Wizard's First Rule, and his writing career was launched with its publication in 1994.[8] Goodkind has competed in various forms of amateur and semi-professional auto racing and currently drives a Radical SR8 SM-500 race car for his own Rahl Racing team.[9] Career[edit] Genre and influences[edit] Criticism[edit] Published works[edit] Related novels
Discworld (world) Great A'Tuin is the Giant Star Turtle (of the fictional species: Chelys galactica) who travels through the Discworld universe's space, carrying four giant elephants (named Berilia, Tubul, Great T'Phon, and Jerakeen) who in turn carry the Discworld. The narration has described A'Tuin as "the only turtle ever to feature on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram." Great A'Tuin's gender is unknown (though in The Colour of Magic Pratchett describes the turtle as male)[citation needed], but the subject of much speculation by some of the Disc's finest scientific minds. The little turtles have since gone off on their own journeys. Great A'Tuin has been mentioned to frequently roll on its belly to avoid asteroid and comet collisions, or even to snatch these projectiles out of the sky which might otherwise destroy the Disc. The Disc itself is described as roughly 10,000 miles wide, giving it a surface area two-fifths that of the Earth, which would make it roughly the size of the Pacific Ocean.
Strata (novel) Strata is a comic science fiction novel by Terry Pratchett. Published in 1981, it is one of Pratchett's first novels and one of only two purely science fiction novels he has written, the other being The Dark Side of the Sun. Kin Arad is a human planetary engineer working for the Company, a human organisation that "builds" habitable planets with techniques and equipment salvaged from the Spindle Kings, an extinct alien race, excelling in terraforming. The expressed aim of the Company's planet building is to create branches of humanity diverse enough to ensure the whole species' survival for eternity, since the Earth's population in the past has been decimated due to the lethal Mindquakes, epidemic mass deaths caused by too much homogeneity among the populace.[2] All planets built by the Company are carefully crafted with artificial strata containing false fossils, indistinguishable from the real thing. The history of the planet "Earth" in Strata unfolded very differently from our Earth.
George R. R. Martin Early life[edit] George Raymond Martin (he later adopted the Confirmation name Richard at the age of 13)[5] was born on September 20, 1948,[6] in Bayonne, New Jersey,[7] the son of longshoreman Raymond Collins Martin and his wife Margaret Brady Martin. He has two younger sisters, Darleen and Janet. Martin's father was half Italian, while his mother was half Irish; [8] his family also contains German, English, and French ancestry. In 1970 Martin earned a B. While he enjoyed teaching, the sudden death of friend and fellow author Tom Reamy in the Fall of 1977 made him reevaluate his own life, and he eventually decided to try and become a full-time writer. Career[edit] Martin began selling science fiction short stories professionally in 1970, at age 21. Although Martin often writes fantasy or horror, a number of his earlier works are science fiction tales occurring in a loosely defined future history, known informally as "The Thousand Worlds" or "The Manrealm". A Song of Ice and Fire[edit]
Elric of Melniboné Elric of Melniboné[1] is a fictional character created by Michael Moorcock, and the antihero of a series of sword and sorcery stories centring in an alternate Earth. The proper name and title of the character is Elric VIII, 428th Emperor of Melniboné. Later novels by Moorcock mark Elric as a facet of the Eternal Champion. Elric first appeared in print in Moorcock's novella, "The Dreaming City" (Science Fantasy No. 47, June 1961); subsequent novellas were reformatted as the novel Stormbringer (1965), but his first appearance in an original novel wasn't until 1973 in Elric of Melniboné. Moorcock's albino character is one of the better known in fantasy literature, having crossed over into multimedia, such as comics and film, though efforts towards the latter stalled over the years. The novels have been continuously in print since the 1970s. Fictional history[edit] Elric is described by his creator, in the first book, Elric of Melniboné, as follows: Influences[edit] Novels[edit] Chronology[edit]
The Dark Side of the Sun Overview[edit] The story is set in a portion of the galaxy populated by fifty-two different sentient species. All of these species, humanity among them, have evolved in the last five million years, and all of them have evolved in a spherical volume of space only a few dozen light-years across centred on Wolf 359. Scattered irregularly across this "life-bubble" are ancient artefacts of a mysterious race called the Jokers, who became extinct long before any of the current races arose. Plot[edit] Dominickdaniel "Dom" Sabalos IV is the son of the inventor of probability math, a science able to predict anything apart from anything to do with the Jokers, and the first person to have had his life fully quantified using p-math. However, not having been told of his father's prediction, and against incalculably distant odds, Dom survives the assassination attempt. Setting[edit] The book is set in the far future. Races[edit] 52 different sentient species (including earth-humanity) exist in the novel.
J. R. R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE (/ˈtɒlkiːn/ TOL-keen;[a] 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. He served as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, Oxford from 1945 to 1959.[1] He was at one time a close friend of C. S. Lewis—they were both members of the informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings. Tolkien was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972. In 2008, The Times ranked him sixth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".[7] Forbes ranked him the 5th top-earning "dead celebrity" in 2009.[8] Biography Family origins Most of Tolkien's paternal ancestors were craftsmen.
Michael Moorcock Michael John Moorcock (born 18 December 1939) is an English writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published literary novels. He is best known for his novels about the anti-hero Elric of Melniboné, a seminal influence on the field of fantasy in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Moorcock in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".[3] Biography[edit] Michael Moorcock was born in London in 1939 and the landscape of London, particularly the area of Notting Hill Gate and Ladbroke Grove, is an important influence in some of his fiction (cf. the Cornelius novels). Moorcock has mentioned The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Apple Cart by George Bernard Shaw and The Constable of St. Moorcock is the former husband of Hilary Bailey. Moorcock was the subject of two book-length works, a monograph and an interview, by Colin Greenland. In the 1990s, he moved to Texas in the United States. Views on politics[edit] Writer[edit]
C. S. Lewis Lewis and fellow novelist J. R. R. In 1956, he married the American writer Joy Davidman, 17 years his junior, who died four years later of cancer at the age of 45. Lewis's works have been translated into more than 30 languages and have sold millions of copies. Biography Childhood Little Lea, home of the Lewis family from 1905 to 1930 Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland, on 29 November 1898.[2] His father was Albert James Lewis (1863–1929), a solicitor whose father, Richard, had come to Ireland from Wales during the mid-19th century. "The New House is almost a major character in my story. Lewis was schooled by private tutors before being sent to the Wynyard School in Watford, Hertfordshire, in 1908, just after his mother's death from cancer. As a teenager, he was wonder-struck by the songs and legends of what he called Northernness, the ancient literature of Scandinavia preserved in the Icelandic sagas. "My Irish life" First World War Return to Oxford University Jane Moore ...
Eternal Champion The Eternal Champion is a fictional creation of the author Michael Moorcock and is a recurrent feature in many of his novels. About the Eternal Champion[edit] The fictional Multiverse, which consists of several universes, many layered dimensions, spheres, and alternative worlds, is the place where the eternal struggle between Law and Chaos, the two main forces of Moorcock's worlds, takes place. In all these dimensions and worlds, these forces constantly war for supremacy. Since the victory of Law or Chaos would cause the Multiverse either to become permanently static or totally formless, the Cosmic Balance enforces certain limits which the powers of Law and Chaos violate at their peril. The Eternal Champion, a Hero who exists in all dimensions, times and worlds, is the one who is chosen by fate to fight for the Cosmic Balance; however, he often does not know of his role, or, even worse, he struggles against it, never to succeed. Incarnations of the Eternal Champion[edit] Vol. 2: Von Bek
The man who foresaw science fiction 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. "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." So begins Hugo Gernsback's nearly century-old novel, Ralph 124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660. And romantic it is. "Dearest," Alice declares upon awakening. Indeed, Ralph's creator took it upon himself to foresee for everyone. Despite all this, few sci-fi fans take Ralph 124C 41+ seriously today.
Solomon Kane Solomon Kane is a fictional character created by the pulp-era writer Robert E. Howard. A late 16th/early 17th century Puritan, Solomon Kane is a somber-looking man who wanders the world with no apparent goal other than to vanquish evil in all its forms. His adventures, published mostly in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, often take him from Europe to the jungles of Africa and back. Howard described him as a sombre and gloomy man of pale face and cold eyes, all of it shadowed by a slouch hat. Stories[edit] Most of the Solomon Kane stories were first published in Weird Tales. "Red Shadows"[edit] Weird Tales (August 1928) featuring "Red Shadows", the first Solomon Kane story First published in Weird Tales, August 1928, alternatively titled "Solomon Kane". "Skulls in the Stars"[edit] First published in Weird Tales, January 1929. "Rattle of Bones"[edit] First published in Weird Tales, June 1929. "The Moon of Skulls"[edit] First published in Weird Tales, Part 1, June 1930; Part 2, July 1930. [edit]