A Fire Upon the Deep is a 1992 science fiction novel by American writer Vernor Vinge. It is a space opera involving superhuman intelligences, aliens, variable physics, space battles, love, betrayal, genocide, and a communication medium resembling Usenet. A Fire Upon the Deep won the Hugo Award in 1993, sharing it with Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.
An ansible is a category of fictional devices or technology capable of near-instantaneous or faster-than-light communication. It can send and receive messages to and from a corresponding device over any distance or obstacle whatsoever with no delay, even between star systems. As a name for such a device, the word "ansible" first appeared in a 1966 novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. Since that time, the term has been broadly used in the works of numerous science fiction authors, across a variety of settings and continuities. A related term is ultrawave.
The Vorkosigan Saga is a series of science fiction novels and short stories set in a common fictional universe by American author Lois McMaster Bujold. The first of these was published in 1986 and the most recent in May 2018. Works in the series have received numerous awards and nominations, including five Hugo award wins including one for Best Series.
Superluminal communication is a hypothetical process in which information is conveyed at faster-than-light speeds. The current scientific consensus is that faster-than-light communication is not possible, and to date it has not been achieved in any experiment.
The Hainish Cycle consists of a number of science fiction novels and stories by Ursula K. Le Guin. It is set in a future history in which civilizations of human beings on planets orbiting a number of nearby stars, including Terra ("Earth"), are contacting each other for the first time and establishing diplomatic relations, and setting up a confederacy under the guidance of the oldest of the human worlds, peaceful Hain. In this history, human beings did not evolve on Earth but were the result of interstellar colonies planted by Hain long ago, which was followed by a long period when interstellar travel ceased. Some of the races have new genetic traits, a result of ancient Hainish experiments in genetic engineering, including people who can dream while awake, and a world of hermaphroditic people who only come into active sexuality once a month, not knowing which sex will manifest in them. In keeping with Le Guin's style, she uses varied social and environmental settings to explore the anthropological and sociological outcomes of human evolution in those diverse environments.
Galactic empires are a common trope used in science fantasy and science fiction, particularly in works known as 'space operas'. Many authors have either used a galaxy-spanning empire as background or written about the growth and/or decline of such an empire. The capital of a galactic empire is frequently a core world, such as a planet relatively close to a galaxy's supermassive black hole, which has advanced considerably in science and technology compared to current human civilization. Characterizations can vary wildly from malevolent forces attacking sympathetic victims to apathetic bureaucracies to more reasonable entities focused on social progress and anywhere in between.
CoDominium is a series of future history novels written by American writer Jerry Pournelle, along with several co-authors, primarily Larry Niven.
Orion's Arm is a multi-authored online science fiction world-building project, first established in 2000 by M. Alan Kazlev, Donna Malcolm Hirsekorn, Bernd Helfert and Anders Sandberg and further co-authored by many people since. Anyone can contribute articles, stories, artwork, or music to the website. A large mailing list exists, in which members debate aspects of the world they are creating, discussing additions, modifications, issues arising, and work to be done.
Joan D. Vinge is an American science fiction author. She is known for such works as her Hugo Award–winning novel The Snow Queen and its sequels, her series about the telepath named Cat, and her Heaven's Chronicles books. She also is the author of The Random House Book of Greek Myths (1999).
A Deepness in the Sky is a science fiction novel by American writer Vernor Vinge. Published in 1999, the novel is a loose prequel to his earlier novel A Fire Upon the Deep (1992). The title is coined by one of the story's main characters in a debate, in a reference to the hibernating habits of his species and to the vastness of space.
The Honorverse is a military science fiction book series, its two subseries, two prequel series, and anthologies created by David Weber and published by Baen Books. They are centered on the space navy career of the principal protagonist Honor Harrington. The books have made The New York Times Best Seller list.
The zoo hypothesis speculates on the assumed behavior and existence of technologically advanced extraterrestrial life and the reasons they refrain from contacting Earth. It is one of many theoretical explanations for the Fermi paradox. The hypothesis states that alien life intentionally avoids communication with Earth to allow for natural evolution and sociocultural development, and avoiding interplanetary contamination, similar to people observing animals at a zoo. The hypothesis seeks to explain the apparent absence of extraterrestrial life despite its generally accepted plausibility and hence the reasonable expectation of its existence. A variant on the zoo hypothesis suggested by the former MIT Haystack Observatory scientist John Allen Ball is the "laboratory" hypothesis, in which humanity is being subjected to experiments, with Earth serving as a giant laboratory.
The exploration of politics in science fiction is arguably older than the identification of the genre. One of the earliest works of modern science fiction, H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, is an extrapolation of the class structure of the United Kingdom of his time, an extreme form of social Darwinism; during tens of thousands of years, human beings have evolved into two different species based on their social class.
Stellar engineering is a type of engineering concerned with creating or modifying stars through artificial means.
The Psychotechnic League is a future history created by American science fiction writer Poul Anderson. The name "Psychotechnic League" was invented by Sandra Miesel during the early 1980s, to capitalize on Anderson's better-known Polesotechnic League future history. Anderson published 21 novels, novellas and short stories set in this future between 1949 and 1957, with a 22nd published in 1968.
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge is a collection of science fiction short stories by American writer Vernor Vinge. The stories were first published from 1966 to 2001, and the book contains all of Vinge's published short stories from that period except "True Names" and "Grimm's Story".
X is a science fiction space trading and combat simulator series created by German developer Egosoft. The series is set in the X-Universe where several races populate a number of worlds connected by jumpgates. The games feature free roaming gameplay with trading, combat, empire building, and missions; leading to the series' phrase: "Trade, Fight, Build, Think". The series, which was launched in 1999 on the Windows platform, consists of five base games: X: Beyond the Frontier, X2: The Threat, X3: Reunion, X Rebirth, and X4: Foundations. X Rebirth introduced a new rendering engine as well as a new plot, one which X4: Foundations now extends the storyline beyond ten years after the events in X Rebirth.
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.
The Summer Queen is a 1991 science fiction/fantasy novel by Joan D. Vinge, the sequel to The Snow Queen. It was nominated for the 1991 Hugo Award for Best Novel and Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.
