Sci-fi Sci-fi is an abbreviation for science fiction. It was coined in the 1950s by Forrest J. Ackerman as a pun on the term "hi-fi". Many science fiction fans initially reacted negatively to the word.
Another abbreviation for science fiction is "SF". However, "sci-fi" is more common in popular usage outside science fiction fandom. Despite this almost universal acceptance of the word, many science fiction fans still cringe when they hear it.
Sometimes the word is used to mean particularly poor or campy examples of science fiction. For example, under such usage, Plan 9 from Outer Space might be considered sci-fi. In this usage it is often spelled "skiffy" which is pronounced to rhyme with "jiffy".
Another source of dislike for the sci-fi term is the tendency for the mainstream to use it as a collective term that lumps together not only true science fiction but fantasy, horror, comic books, cult films, special effects action films, only marginally related genres such as anime and gaming, and completely unrelated fields such as UFOlogy.
Despite this controversy, two high-profile science fiction-based cable networks in the United States and Great Britain take their name from this term, although both networks air programming which may not fit into everyone's definition of "science fiction."
A variation of the term is "sci-fantasy".
Science fiction, literary genre in which a background of science or pseudoscience is an integral part of the story. Although science fiction is a form of fantastic literature, many of the events recounted are within the realm of future possibility, e.g., robots, space travel, interplanetary war, invasions from outer space.
Science fiction is generally considered to have had its beginnings in the late 19th cent. with the romances of Jules Verne and the novels of H. G. Wells. In 1926, Hugo Gernsback founded the pulp magazine Amazing Stories, devoted exclusively to science fiction, particularly to serious explorations into the future. Good writing in the field was further encouraged when John W. Campbell, Jr., founded Astounding Science Fiction in 1937. In that magazine much attention was paid to literary and dramatic qualities, theme, and characterization; Campbell "discovered" and popularized many important science fiction writers, including Isaac Asimov, Frederic Brown, A. E. van Vogt, Lewis Padgett, Eric Frank Russell, Clifford Simak, Theodore Sturgeon, Fritz Leiber, Murray Leinster, Robert Heinlein, and Raymond F. Jones.
Science fiction has established itself as a legitimate branch of literature. C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet (1938) used science fiction as a vehicle for theological speculation, and works such as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four (1949), Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953), and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s Cat's Cradle (1963) demonstrate the particular effectiveness of the genre as an instrument of social criticism. Science-fiction literature anticipates and comments on political and social concerns, and a variety of science-fiction subgenres have emerged: feminist science fiction; disaster novels and novels treating the world emerging from a disaster's wake; stories postulating alternative worlds; fantastic voyages to "inner space"; and "cyberpunk" novels set in "cyberspace," a realm where computerized information possesses three dimensions in a "virtual reality."
The rich variety of notable science-fiction writing to emerge since the "classic" work of Asimov, Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ray Bradbury includes Frank Herbert's Dune (1965) and its sequels, which conjured up a desert world where issues of ecology, ethics, and human destiny and evolution were played out; Philip K. Dick's satirical and philosophical vision of postnuclear war southern California in novels such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) and Valis (1981); the apocalyptic disaster fiction of J. G. Ballard, including The Crystal World (1966) and Vermilion Sands (1971); the rigorously science-based works of Poul Anderson, such as Tau Zero (1970) and The Boat of a Million Years (1989); Michael Crichton's best-selling science-fiction suspense novels, particularly The Andromeda Strain (1969) and Jurassic Park (1990); William Gibson's evocations of urban "cyberpunk" desolation in novels such as Count Zero (1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988); Doris Lessing's Canopus in Argos: Archives, a series of four novels (1979-83) that explores the possibilities of a feminist utopia; and the writing of Ursula Le Guin, who has imagined ecological utopias in works such as Always Coming Home (1985) and The Word for World is Forest (1986).
Over recent decades, science fiction has become popular in the nonliterary media, including film, television, and electronic games. Star Wars (1977) and its sequels and prequel, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) were among the most financially successful motion pictures ever produced.
Fractals A lossy compression method used for color images. Providing ratios of 100:1 or greater, fractals are especially suited to natural objects, such as trees, clouds and rivers. Fractals turn an image into a set of data and an algorithm for expanding it back to the original.
The term comes from "fractus," which is Latin for broken or fragmented. It was coined by IBM Fellow and doctor of mathematics Benoit Mandelbrot, who expanded on ideas from earlier mathematicians and discovered similarities in chaotic and random events and shapes.
Fractal geometry, branch of mathematics concerned with irregular patterns made of parts that are in some way similar to the whole, e.g., twigs and tree branches, a property called self-similarity or self-symmetry. Unlike conventional geometry, which is concerned with regular shapes and whole-number dimensions, such as lines (one-dimensional) and cones (three-dimensional), fractal geometry deals with shapes found in nature that have non-integer, or fractal, dimensions-linelike rivers with a fractal dimension of about 1.2 and conelike mountains with a fractal dimension between 2 and 3.
Fractal geometry developed from Benoit Mandelbrot's study of complexity and chaos (see chaos theory). Beginning in 1961, he published a series of studies on fluctuations of the stock market, the turbulent motion of fluids, the distribution of galaxies in the universe, and on irregular shorelines on the English coast. By 1975 Mandelbrot had developed a theory of fractals that became a serious subject for mathematical study. Fractal geometry has been applied to such diverse fields as the stock market, chemical industry, meteorology, and computer graphics.
| Possible keyword strings: 3D Fantasy Art Surrealism Pictures: sci-fi science fiction fractal geometry. Free desktop backgrounds wallpapers screen savers downloads. Limited edition prints artist certified signed fine arts, surreal fine art posters, free wallpapers multimedia gallery, paintings screensavers, drawings fantasy landscapes, posters, multimedia screensavers drawings, fantasy landscapes mystery suspense, 3ds studio max, surrealistic picture, Toronto Canada romantic design fineart gallery screensaver, screen saver, screen, saver, programming, free screensavers, free, screen savers, custom screen saver development, desktop themes,. |
|
