What are the probes more commonly called - and what acclaimed computer scientist are they named after?ġ0. Saberhagen's masterwork describes an ongoing war between humanity and Berserkers, self-replicating probes programmed with one primary objective: Destroy all life. Along with the Swords series, he's best known for the Berserker books. Fred Saberhagen, one of the giants of 20th Century science fiction, passed away on June 29, 2007. He made headlines in 1995 for challenging a conference of computer artists and the world at large to help identify the extinct species in the new media taxonomy, initiating the Dead Media Project. This author edited Mirrorshades, an anthology of stories that largely defined the cyberpunk genre, along with authoring books like Holy Fire, Zeitgeist and, most recently, The Zenith Angle. Who wrote it? (Hint: He's perhaps better known for the Discworld series. While "Ogg" comes from the network game Netrek, "Vorbis" derives from a character in a book, Small Gods. Ogg Vorbis (sometimes just called Vorbis) is an open source patent-free audio compression format, developed as a replacement for proprietary digital audio encoding formats like MP3, VQF, and AAC. If you know that to "grok" something is to understand something so well that it is fully absorbed into oneself, you may be familiar with the 1961 science fiction classic, Stranger in a Strange Land. Second Life was intended by founder Philip Rosedale to closely mirror the "metaverse," a 3D version of the Internet set in the near-future as described in the cyberpunk novel Snow Crash. Cyberpunk is a sensibility or belief that a few outsiders, armed with their own individuality and technological capability, can fend off the tendencies of traditional institutions to use technology to control society. This seminal science fiction writer's 3 Law of Robotics have been revived again and again as robots become integrated into real life. What author is generally credited with coining, or at the least popularizing, the term cyberspace ?ģ. Who coined the term "robot?" (Scroll to the end of the definition for the answer.)Ģ. In the play, the robots eventually overthrow their human creators. The term robot first appeared in a 1920 play, not a novel, called R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots. While there still aren't any flying cars or consumer jet packs, it's remarkable how far we've come in 2007.ġ. In the meantime, test your knowledge of the science fiction writers whose geeky ideas have, in many cases, been turned into reality. (He also was friendly enough to link to our cheat sheets and write some kind words - thanks, Marc!) We'll be tracking down these authors at the Cambridge public library soon for some juicy beach reading. Netscape co-founder and now blogger extraordinaire Marc Andreessen took some time from his busy schedule as an entrepreneur with social networking startup Ning to name his favorite up-and-coming science fiction writers.
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