A keiretsu is a set of companies with interlocking business relationships and shareholdings that dominated the Japanese economy in the second half of the 20th century. In the legal sense, it is a type of business group that is in a loosely organized alliance within Japan's business community. It rose up to replace the zaibatsu system that was dissolved in the occupation of Japan following the Second World War. Though their influence has shrunk since the late 20th century, they continue to be important forces in Japan's economy in the early 21st century.
Leigh Douglass Brackett was an American author and screenwriter. Nicknamed "the Queen of Space Opera," she was one of the most prominent female writers during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. As a screenwriter, she was best known for her collaborations with director Howard Hawks, mainly writing Westerns and crime films. She also worked on an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), elements of which remained in the film; she died before it went into production.
Robert Lynn Asprin was an American science fiction and fantasy author and active fan, known best for his humorous series MythAdventures and Phule's Company.
A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most novelettes and short stories. The English word novella derives from the Italian novella meaning a short story related to true facts.
Zaibatsu is a Japanese term referring to industrial and financial vertically integrated business conglomerates in the Empire of Japan, whose influence and size allowed control over significant parts of the Japanese economy from the Meiji period to World War II. A zaibatsu's general structure included a family-owned holding company on top, and a bank which financed the other, mostly industrial subsidiaries within them. Although the zaibatsu played an important role in the Japanese economy beginning in 1868, they especially increased in number and importance following the Russo-Japanese War, World War I, and Japan's subsequent attempt to conquer East Asia and the Pacific Rim during the interwar period and World War II. After World War II, they were dissolved by the Allied occupation forces and succeeded by the keiretsu. Equivalents to the zaibatsu can still be found in other countries, such as the chaebol conglomerates of South Korea.
Mitsui Group is a Japanese corporate group and keiretsu that traces its roots to the zaibatsu groups that were dissolved after World War II. Unlike the zaibatsu of the pre-war period, there is no controlling company with regulatory power. Instead, the companies in the group hold shares in each other, but they are limited to exchanging information and coordinating plans through regular meetings.
Thieves' World is a shared world fantasy series created by Robert Lynn Asprin in 1978. The original series comprised twelve anthologies, including stories by science fiction and fantasy authors Poul Anderson, John Brunner, Andrew J. Offutt, C. J. Cherryh, Janet Morris, and Chris Morris.
Executive Outcomes is a private military company (PMC) founded in South Africa in 1989 by Eeben Barlow, a former lieutenant-colonel of the South African Defence Force. It later became part of the South African-based holding company Strategic Resource Corporation. The company was reestablished in 2020.
Megacorporation, mega-corporation, or megacorp, a term originally coined by Alfred Eichner in his book The Megacorp and Oligopoly: Micro Foundations of Macro Dynamics but popularized by William Gibson, derives from the combination of the prefix mega- with the word corporation. It has become widespread in cyberpunk literature. It is synonymous with syndicate, globalist- or transnational capital. It refers to a corporation that is a massive conglomerate, holding monopolistic or near-monopolistic control over multiple markets. Megacorps are so powerful that they are above the government laws, possess their own heavily armed private armies, are operators of privatized police forces, hold "sovereign" territory, and even act as outright governments. They often exercise a large degree of control over their employees, taking the idea of "corporate culture" to an extreme.
Howard V. Tayler is the creator of the webcomic Schlock Mercenary. He worked as a volunteer missionary for the LDS Church, then graduated from Brigham Young University. Using his degree in music composition, he started an independent record label.
Nina Williams is a fictional character from Namco's Tekken fighting game series. A cold-blooded professional assassin from Ireland, Nina made her first appearance in the original 1994 installment. She is the only female playable character to appear in all main games of the Tekken series. She has also starred in her own spin-off game, Death by Degrees.
Kazuya Mishima is a fictional character and one of the main antagonists of Bandai Namco's Tekken series. Debuting as the protagonist of the original game, Kazuya has since become one of the series' most prominent villains after serving as the penultimate boss of Tekken 2. The son of a wealthy zaibatsu CEO named Heihachi Mishima, Kazuya seeks revenge against his father for throwing him off a cliff years earlier. Kazuya becomes corrupted in later games, seeking to obtain more power and eventually coming into conflict with his own son, Jin Kazama. Kazuya Mishima possesses the Devil Gene, a demonic mutation, which he inherited from his late mother, Kazumi Mishima, which can transform him into a demonic version of himself known as Devil Kazuya. Devil Kazuya has often appeared as a separate character in older installments prior to becoming part of Kazuya's moveset in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and later games. Kazuya Mishima is also present in related series media and other games.
Tekken 6 is a 2007 fighting game developed and published by Bandai Namco Games. It is the sixth main and seventh overall installment in the Tekken franchise. It was released on arcades in November 2007 as the first game running on the PlayStation 3-based System 357 arcade board. A year later, the game received an update, subtitled Bloodline Rebellion; both versions also saw a limited release in North America. A home version based on the update was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in October 2009; this was the first time a main installment was produced for another console. A port to PlayStation Portable was also released shortly after.
The Japanese economic miracle refers to Japan's record period of economic growth between the post-World War II era and the beginning of the global Oil Crisis (1955-1973). During the economic boom, Japan rapidly became the world's third-largest economy. By the 1970s, Japan was no longer expanding as quickly as it had in the previous decades despite per-worker productivity remaining high.
Tekken (鉄拳) is a 1994 fighting game developed and published by Namco. It was originally released on arcades, then ported to the PlayStation home console in 1995. One of the earliest 3D polygon-based games of the genre, Tekken was Namco's answer to Virtua Fighter and was designed by Seiichi Ishii, who himself was also Virtua Fighter's designer when he worked at Sega previously. The game was developed on the purpose-built low-cost System 11 board, based on PlayStation hardware.
Christopher Crosby Morris is an American author of fiction and non-fiction, as well as a lyricist, musical composer, and singer-songwriter. He is married to author Janet Morris. He is a defense policy and strategy analyst and a principal in M2 Technologies, Inc. He writes primarily as Chris Morris, a shortened form of his name, but occasionally uses pseudonyms.
Bandai Namco Entertainment'sTekken media franchise is known for its diverse cast of characters hailing from various nationalities, all coming together to compete in the King of Iron Fist tournament. In addition to the human characters, Tekken also introduces non-human characters for comic relief, such as the bear Kuma, his love interest Panda, the boxing kangaroo Roger, and the dinosaur Alex. Certain characters like Jin Kazama, Kazuya Mishima, Lee Chaolan, and Jun Kazama have their own alternative versions. Each character has their own goals for participating in the tournament.
The Sacred Band of Stepsons is a fictional ancient cavalry unit created by Janet Morris and based on the historical Sacred Band of Thebes, an elite strike force of paired lovers and friends that flourished during the fourth century BC in ancient Greece. The Sacred Band of Stepsons series of fantasy novels and stories take place in a myth-like milieu that mixes historical places such as Nisibis, Mygdonia and Chaeronea; warriors such as Theagenes ; gods such as Enlil, Maat and Harmonia; philosophers such as Heraclitus and Thales; cavalry tactics and customs such as homosexuality in the militaries of ancient Greece with those that exist only in fantasy. The exploits of the Stepsons are chronicled in eleven short stories and nine novels. In a fantasy context, this series explores the difficulties facing war-fighters in personal relationships and the enduring questions surrounding the military's historical mixing of homosexuals and heterosexuals in combat.
This is complete list of works by American science fiction and fantasy author Fred Saberhagen.
