I wonder what inspired OudeisPloiarkhos to create an account and upload the plot summary. It's their only contribution to Wikipedia, and it's so detailed I somewhat wonder if it's really proper for the site.
I'd guess some kind of academic assignment, though it's strange that they spent a few more months editing it after the original post.
My guess is a family member. The author seems to have been a colorful and accomplished man who, nevertheless, never attained fame. The Wikipedia page, as well as the one about the author himself, might be the work of an appreciative child or relative wanting to embellish the author's memory.
In Baltimore, there's something similar with the Amaranthine Museum, dedicated to the works of the eccentric and obscure artist Les Harris by his very dedicated daughter. It's something of a hidden treasure.[1]
Some weird stuff has cult-like following in some countries. Meaning, in Hungary, the Bud Spencer movies, Torrente and Ford Fairlane script punchlines are something almost every hungarian can recite by heart. I didn't occur this phenomenon anywhere else (yet).
Dinner For One [0] is a prominent example of a minor production in one language becoming unaccountably famous in another, to the point that certain lines became standard catchphrases in the adoptive culture — in this case, German.
That’s one of the reasons I love HN, you find some posts like this that are completely out of this world!!!
Being Greek and a sci-fi fan, I need to find this book :-)
A throwback to vintage serials, shot as time and budget allowed over years. I pre ordered a copy of the DVD and waited a few years for it to arrive so I guess it was like a crowd funding thing long before that was easy to do.
"His mission begins with the unlikely delivery of a cat to a small outer-belt asteroid saloon where he meets his former dance partner, and renowned interplanetary fruit thief, the Blueberry Pirate. As payment for his delivery of the cat, Curtis receives a homemade cloning device already in the process of creating a creature most rare in this space quadrant – a Real Live Girl."
Oh, there's a copy hiding out on YouTube. I don't feel so bad posting this link because it's long out of print, I actually own a copy that I bought from the original artist, and it's just... pretty amazing.
After the opening credits, there's just 2 minutes of the protagonist shaving that I forgot about. But then he jumps out of his ship to bring the cat to the asteroid/saloon. I'll just link that moment because it's the moment I fell in love with this movie.
The American Astronaut is one of my all-time favorite movies, and I have never met anyone before, online nor real-life, who has even heard of that movie much less liked it.
The other cult classic that I would put in a double feature with this one is Six String Samurai. Another weird movie that absorbs and reflects a lot of genres and tropes (post apocalypse, martial arts, Vegas, Elvis) and that indie DIY aesthetic. Also very musical, with several segments that are basically music videos for the band that did the sound track. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-String_Samurai
My impression is that central Europe (which I apologize for lumping together) has a pretty long-running tradition of literary absurdism and surrealism. They're works that are more allegorical than "scientific" or "futuristic," even though they might be responding to (or "riffing on") actual early sci-fi of the techno-futurism variety.
As some examples, besides his R.U.R., Capek (Czech) also wrote The War with the Newts. It's an animal fairy tale that predates George Orwell's animal fairy tale by a decade.
Franz Kafka, obviously, was born in Prague and spent his life in central Europe.
Witold Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke (1937) is a Polish analogue from the same decade. Bruno Schulz's short story anthology The Street of Crocodiles is another one.
After World War 2, you have people like Stanislaw Lem (Polish) writing a lot of farcical science fiction and Jan Svankmajer (Czech) making a lot of grotesque, farcical stop-motion animation.
Adjacently, on the Russian side you have SF-flavored satire like Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog, and on the French side you have stuff like L'Écume des jours.
Sadly I hear about this for first time myself. The word hvězdoplavba is somehow know and used, mostly in poetic context. I don't think it had any particular affect on the society tho. I'll go check some second hand bookstores for this gem.
Edit: after reading bit more about this, the author was kind of inspired by another Czech author Karel Čapek, whose works did and keeps influencing people (also coined the word Robot for "mechanical worker" (that's enough bragging for today)
As science fiction and fantasy have evolved, they have converged.
We can see plenty of fantasy in works of science fiction in the conventional _forms_ of science fiction -- short stories, novels, TV shows, movies, video games.
It will be interesting to see science fiction in the conventional _forms_ of fantasy -- epics, ballads, poetry, fairy tales, onomastics, runic and incantatory forms of language....
(As an aside, I've heard rumors of published contemporary sci-fi written in classical Sanskrit verse but I can't find any -- is this really a thing?)
You mean like the cult and occult stuff? True, I guess there were some elements. Heaven's Gate, Scientology, and others appear to have adopted a religious outlook on science fiction ideas. I'm not sure that they really adopted conventional forms of fantasy in their literature.
Arabic and chinese each have literary traditions approximately as broad and deep as the western canon. I'm sure there are plenty of others. In all likelihood most excellent and interesting works are not available in english.
The Russian web is surprisingly helpful for cyber security or undocumented Windows APIs. They also seem to have a better ecosystem of small Windows utilities to do obscure system tasks (like look up your connected USB devices, or check your memory for defects).
Seems like AI translation is will soon be good enough to explore this. Unfortunately, I think bigger barrier is culture than language and maybe we're not missing out that much in practical terms then.
Readit News
I'd guess some kind of academic assignment, though it's strange that they spent a few more months editing it after the original post.
In Baltimore, there's something similar with the Amaranthine Museum, dedicated to the works of the eccentric and obscure artist Les Harris by his very dedicated daughter. It's something of a hidden treasure.[1]
[1] https://amaranthinemuseum.org/
His family is a possible source, the external links include a blog post saying that the author's son sent him a PDF copy.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinner_for_One
The Czech article is way shorter and has a bunch more different authors
Or you can read it in the study room of the National library (Klementinum): https://aleph.nkp.cz/F/83GIEU45K19XBDL2VVT6CJBMH2LA526L5YQ9U...
A throwback to vintage serials, shot as time and budget allowed over years. I pre ordered a copy of the DVD and waited a few years for it to arrive so I guess it was like a crowd funding thing long before that was easy to do.
"His mission begins with the unlikely delivery of a cat to a small outer-belt asteroid saloon where he meets his former dance partner, and renowned interplanetary fruit thief, the Blueberry Pirate. As payment for his delivery of the cat, Curtis receives a homemade cloning device already in the process of creating a creature most rare in this space quadrant – a Real Live Girl."
Oh, there's a copy hiding out on YouTube. I don't feel so bad posting this link because it's long out of print, I actually own a copy that I bought from the original artist, and it's just... pretty amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COxhvqWWxSU
After the opening credits, there's just 2 minutes of the protagonist shaving that I forgot about. But then he jumps out of his ship to bring the cat to the asteroid/saloon. I'll just link that moment because it's the moment I fell in love with this movie.
https://youtu.be/COxhvqWWxSU?t=270
Also on YouTube, apparently an official release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaPP00uNkNI
As some examples, besides his R.U.R., Capek (Czech) also wrote The War with the Newts. It's an animal fairy tale that predates George Orwell's animal fairy tale by a decade.
Franz Kafka, obviously, was born in Prague and spent his life in central Europe.
Witold Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke (1937) is a Polish analogue from the same decade. Bruno Schulz's short story anthology The Street of Crocodiles is another one.
After World War 2, you have people like Stanislaw Lem (Polish) writing a lot of farcical science fiction and Jan Svankmajer (Czech) making a lot of grotesque, farcical stop-motion animation.
Edit: after reading bit more about this, the author was kind of inspired by another Czech author Karel Čapek, whose works did and keeps influencing people (also coined the word Robot for "mechanical worker" (that's enough bragging for today)
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Zero
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniara
We can see plenty of fantasy in works of science fiction in the conventional _forms_ of science fiction -- short stories, novels, TV shows, movies, video games.
It will be interesting to see science fiction in the conventional _forms_ of fantasy -- epics, ballads, poetry, fairy tales, onomastics, runic and incantatory forms of language....
(As an aside, I've heard rumors of published contemporary sci-fi written in classical Sanskrit verse but I can't find any -- is this really a thing?)
I think this happened a fair amount in the forms of religious texts / mythology and mysticism in the early/mid 20th century, no?
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