Fantasy

Commander James Fitzjames (Tobias Menzies) in Terror Camp Clear (Image courtesy AMC Studios / Amazon. All rights reserved)

1

“Terror Camp Clear” is the eighth episode of the TV show “The Terror”, an adapatation of a novel by Dan Simmons with the same title, and follows “Horrible from Supper”.

Note. This article contains spoilers about “Terror Camp Clear”.

Captain Francis Crozier (Jared Harris) and Commander James Fitzjames (Tobias Menzies) go to the stone cairn to update the information previously left so that someone can find out what happened to Franklin’s expedition. When they return to the camp, they find it practically in a state of war because of the intrigue by Cornelius Hickey (Adam Nagaitis) and the paranoia stressed by the fog that has fallen over the area.

Lt. John Irving (Ronan Raftery) in Horrible from Supper (Image courtesy AMC Studios / Amazon. All rights reserved)

1

“Horrible from Supper” is the seventh episode of the TV show “The Terror”, an adapatation of a novel by Dan Simmons with the same title, and follows “A Mercy”.

Note. This article contains spoilers about “Horrible from Supper”.

In April 1848 the survivors of Franklin’s expedition abandon the ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror to walk to safety. Captain Francis Crozier (Jared Harris) is persuaded by Dr. Henry Goodsir (Paul Ready) that canned food is poisoning men and as soon as possible sends small teams hunting for possible arctic animals.

Larry Niven in 2010 (photo ©Ceridwen)

2

Laurence van Cott Niven was born on April 30, 1938 in Los Angeles, California, USA. In 1962 Larry Niven earned a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics from Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas. In 1964 he decided to become a writer and published the first story, “The Coldest Place”. It also begins the Tales of Known Space, a future history that covers about a millennium of history from the human beings’ first attempts of expansion into the solar system.

In addition to continuing that cycle, Larry Niven began various collaborations with some of his fellow writers, in some cases to write novels set in his Known Space. The most important collaboration is with Jerry Pournelle, with whom Larry Niven has written several novels including the two of the Motie mini-cycle “The Mote in God’s Eye” (1974) and “The Gripping Hand”, also known as “The Moat Around Murcheson’s Eye” (1993).

Larry Niven continues his work as a writer so we can expect new works, written on his own or in collaboration. When he wrote his first science fiction stories, many fellow writers were moving towards new trends such as the new wave movement but he preferred more traditional themes, which at the time seemed obsolete to many people. Niven developed them in a solid way, basing his stories on plausible scientific and technological premises, eventually influencing writers of the next generations.

Portrait of Jack Williamson in Air Wonder Stories in 1929

0

John Stewart Williamson was born on April 29, 1908 in Brisbee, in what was then called the Arizona territory, in the USA. At the beginning of his career, Jack Williamson was influenced mainly by Abraham Merritt but was also impressed by the works of Miles J. Breuer and decided to contact him. The two of them ended up collaborating and published together works such as “The Girl from Mars” in 1929 and “Birth of a New Republic” in 1931.

In 1947 Jack Williamson published the novelette “With Folded Hands”. The concepts were expanded and developed somewhat differently in the novel “The Humanoids” (1949). The author wrote another sequel many years later, “The Humanoid Touch” (1980).

In the 1950s, Jack Williamson began a collaboration with his fellow writer Frederik Pohl. The two of them published several novels, in particular the Starchild trilogy: “The Reefs of Space” (1964), “Starchild” (1965) and “Rogue Star” (1969).

In 2001 Jack Williamson published the novella “The Ultimate Earth”, winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards. He’s the oldest writer to win those awards in any category. His last novel, “The Stonehenge Gate”, was published in 2005.

Jack Williamson died on November 10, 2006. In almost 80 years of activity he went through many phases of the evolution of science fiction, adapting to new things and managing to maintain a freshness in his works. He was a truly prolific and long-lived author who marked decades of science fiction.

Terry Pratchett in 2012 (photo ©Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons)

3

Terence David John Pratchett was born on April 28, 1948, in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England. Almost accidentally, during an interview with a publisher, Terry Pratchett said he had written a novel, and in 1971, it was published as “The Carpet People”. It’s a comic fantasy novel that contains some elements that later became typical of the author’s works. The novel was substantially revised and published in a new edition in 1992.

In 1983 he published the first Discworld novel, “The Color of Magic”, whose fame was increased by a radio adaptation broadcast by the BBC. Pratchett wrote more novels set in the same fictional universe and after a few years decided to pursue a career as a full-time writer.

Writing Discworld novels became Terry Pratchett’s main occupation. That fictional universe is common to all the books and various characters appear in several novels in a series that can be divided into several cycles: Rincewind, Death, Witches, City Watch, Wizards, Tiffany Aching and Moist von Lipwig. Some other novels in the series are not included in any particular cycle.

Terry Pratchett’s work continued almost to the end of his life, dictating texts to his assistant or using a speech recognition system. In recent years he returned to science fiction in a collaboration with Stephen Baxter in the Long Earth series, which began with “The Long Earth”, the first of five novels of which two were published after Pratchett’s death, which occurred March 12, 2015. The writer had a humanist funeral.