Four Encounters is an unfinished work by the writer and philosopher Olaf Stapledon, written in the late 1940s but only published by Bran's Head Books in 1976, 26 years after the author's death. This edition contained an introduction by Brian Aldiss, a longtime champion of Stapledon's works. The text is also available in compilations of the author's writings.
The story is not science fiction, the discipline in which the author made his name. Rather it takes place in contemporary (post World War II) Britain, and describes four meetings with various characters who are named for the spiritual quality that best defines them: a Christian, a scientist, a mystic and a revolutionary.
The encounters take place in everyday scenarios — at parties, in a garage, etc. The narrator assesses all these various types according to his own association with, and understanding of, "The Spirit" — a theme familiar to readers of Stapledon from his discourses on the matter in his best-known works.
There were originally to have been ten encounters, but Stapledon died before the project was completed.
The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, or just Don Quixote, is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. It was originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615. Considered a founding work of Western literature, it is often labeled "the first modern European novel" and many authors consider it to be the one of the greatest novels ever written. Don Quixote also holds the distinction of being the second most-translated book in the world, after the Bible.
William Olaf Stapledon – known as Olaf Stapledon – was a British philosopher and author of science fiction. In 2014, he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
Scientific romance is an archaic, mainly British term for the genre of fiction now commonly known as science fiction. The term originated in the 1850s to describe both fiction and elements of scientific writing, but it has since come to refer to the science fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, primarily that of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle. In recent years the term has come to be applied to science fiction written in a deliberately anachronistic style as a homage to or pastiche of the original scientific romances.
Star Maker is a science fiction novel by British writer Olaf Stapledon, published in 1937. The book describes a history of life in the universe, dwarfing in scale Stapledon's previous book, Last and First Men (1930), a history of the human species over two billion years. Star Maker tackles philosophical themes such as the essence of life, of birth, decay and death, and the relationship between creation and creator. A pervading theme is that of progressive unity within and between different civilizations.
Derry is a fictional town in the U.S. state of Maine that has served as the setting for a number of Stephen King's novels, novellas, and short stories. Derry first appeared in King's 1981 short story "The Bird and the Album" and has reappeared as recently as his 2011 novel 11/22/63.
Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a "future history" science fiction novel written in 1930 by the British author Olaf Stapledon. A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen distinct human species, of which our own is the first. The book employs a narrative conceit that, under subtle inspiration, the novelist has unknowingly been dictated a channelled text from the last human species.
Odd John: A Story Between Jest and Earnest is a 1935 science fiction novel by the British author Olaf Stapledon. The novel explores the theme of the Übermensch (superman) in the character of John Wainwright, whose supernormal human mentality inevitably leads to conflict with normal human society and to the destruction of the utopian colony founded by John and other superhumans.
An extraterrestrial or alien is any extraterrestrial lifeform; a lifeform that did not originate on Earth. The word extraterrestrial means "outside Earth". The first published use of extraterrestrial as a noun occurred in 1956, during the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
Walter de Stapledon was Bishop of Exeter 1308–1326 and twice Lord High Treasurer of England, in 1320 and 1322. He founded Exeter College, Oxford and contributed liberally to the rebuilding of Exeter Cathedral. His tomb and monument, of great architectural importance, survives in Exeter Cathedral.
Last Men in London (1932) is a science fiction novel by British writer Olaf Stapledon.
Shabdangal (1947) [Voices] is a novel by Vaikom Muhammad Basheer which talks about war, orphanhood, hunger, disease and prostitution. The whole length of the novel is a dialogue between a soldier and a writer. The soldier approaches the writer and tells him the story of his life. The writer takes down notes and asks questions to the soldier, and gives answers of his own to the soldier's questions. The novel faced heavy criticism at the time of its publication for its violence and vulgarity.
2001: A Space Odyssey is the 1968 science fiction novel written by Arthur C. Clarke and the 1968 film directed by Stanley Kubrick. It is a part of Clarke's Space Odyssey series, the first of four novels and two films. Both the novel and the film are partially based on Clarke's 1948 short story "The Sentinel", an entry in a BBC short story competition, and "Encounter in the Dawn", published in 1953 in the magazine Amazing Stories.
Peculiar Lives is the seventh in the series of Time Hunter novellas and features the characters Honoré Lechasseur and Emily Blandish from Daniel O'Mahony's Doctor Who novella The Cabinet of Light. It is written by Philip Purser-Hallard, author of the Mad Norwegian Press Faction Paradox novel Of the City of the Saved...
The term insectoid denotes any creature or object that shares a similar body or traits with common earth insects and arachnids. The term is a combination of "insect" and "-oid".
Fictional locations are places that exist only in fiction and not in reality, such as the Negaverse or Planet X. Writers may create and describe such places to serve as backdrop for their fictional works. Fictional locations are also created for use as settings in role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons.
Stapledon may refer to:
The Viagens Interplanetarias series is a sequence of science fiction stories by L. Sprague de Camp, begun in the late 1940s and written under the influence of contemporary space opera and sword and planet stories, particularly Edgar Rice Burroughs's Martian novels. Set in the future in the 21st and 22nd centuries, the series is named for the quasi-public Terran agency portrayed as monopolizing interstellar travel, the Brazilian-dominated Viagens Interplanetarias. It is also known as the Krishna series, as the majority of the stories belong to a sequence set on a fictional planet of that name. While de Camp started out as a science fiction writer and his early reputation was based on his short stories in the genre, the Viagens tales represent his only extended science fiction series.
Death into Life is a 1946 novel by British writer Olaf Stapledon. Not strictly science fiction, the novel is described as "an imaginative treatment of the problem of survival after death". It deals primarily with the soul of a rear gunner who is killed in World War II, and who finds himself surviving his apparent death - first as part of a spirit bomber-crew, then as part of the spirits who were killed in the battle, and so on until finally his soul becomes part of a 'cosmical spirit'.
Nebula Maker is a science fiction novel by Olaf Stapledon and published posthumously by Bran's Head Books in 1976. It was probably around 1932-33, while Stapledon would have also worked on another novel, Odd John. It was a first draft of the author's 1937 opus Star Maker. A notable difference is the treatment of the nebulae themselves, as a cosmic civilisation, peopled with recognisable characters. Two of them – Bright Heart and Fire Bolt – are treated as if individual human beings.
Carnival Phantasm is a comedy OVA series based on the Type-Moon gag manga, Take-Moon by Eri Takenashi, the author of Kannagi: Crazy Shrine Maidens. The series was created by Type-Moon to celebrate the company's tenth anniversary. It focuses on funny and absurd situations happening to many characters of the Type-Moon games, including from Fate/stay night and Tsukihime.
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