"reviews A 1997 poll of over 25,000 readers of ""The Independent"" listed ""The Wasp Factory"" as one of the top 100 books of the 20th century. In 2013, the Australian producer and composer Ben Frost directed an opera adaptation of the Iain Banks novel, in which Frank is represented by three female singers. The Wasp Factory The Wasp Factory is the first novel by Scottish writer Iain Banks, published in 1984. Before the publication of ""The Wasp Factory,"" Banks had written several science fiction novels that had not been accepted for publication. Banks decided to try a more mainstream novel"
"a costing clerk for a Chancery Lane, London, law firm during this period of his life. Banks decided to become a writer at the age of 11. He completed his first novel ""The Hungarian Lift-Jet"" at 16 and his second novel ""TTR"" (aka ""The Tashkent Rambler"") during his first year at Stirling University in 1972. Though he considered himself primarily a science fiction author, his lack of success at being published as such led him to pursue mainstream fiction, resulting in his first published novel ""The Wasp Factory"", which was published in 1984 when he was thirty. After the publication"
"the game that is the centrepiece of ""The Player of Games"", and cheerfully makes no attempt at scientific credibility. Banks says he conceived the Culture in the 1960s, and that it is a combination of wish fulfilment and a reaction against the predominantly right-wing science fiction produced in the United States. In his opinion, the Culture might be a ""great place to live"", with no exploitation of people or AIs, and whose people could create beings greater than themselves. Before his first published novel, ""The Wasp Factory"" (1984; not science fiction), was accepted in 1983, Banks wrote five books that"
"and success of ""The Wasp Factory"", Banks began to write full-time. His editor at Macmillan, James Hale, advised him to write one book a year and Banks agreed to this schedule. His second novel ""Walking on Glass"" was published in 1985. ""The Bridge"" followed in 1986, and ""Espedair Street"", published in 1987, was later broadcast as a series on BBC Radio 4. His first published science fiction book ""Consider Phlebas"" was released in 1987 and was the first of several novels of the acclaimed Culture series. Banks cited Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Brian Aldiss, M. John"
"wasps in his novel ""The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth"" (1904): ""Wasp"" (1957) is a science fiction book by the English writer Eric Frank Russell; it is generally considered Russell's best novel. In Stieg Larsson's book ""The Girl Who Played with Fire"" (2006) and its film adaptation, Lisbeth Salander has adopted her kickboxing ringname, ""The Wasp"", as her hacker handle and has a wasp tattoo on her neck, indicating her high status among hackers, unlike her real world situation, and that like a small but painfully stinging wasp, she could be dangerous. Parasitoidal wasps played"
"alien. Following the success of ""The Wasp Factory"", Banks began to write full-time. ""The Wasp Factory"" is written from a first person perspective, told by 16-year-old Francis Cauldhame (""Frank""), describing his childhood and all that remains of it. Frank observes many shamanistic rituals of his own invention, and it is soon revealed that Frank killed three children before he reached the age of ten himself. The book sold well, but was greeted with a mixture of acclaim and criticism, due to its gruesome depiction of violence. ""The Irish Times"" called it ""a work of unparalleled depravity."" The story is told"
"were rejected, of which three were science fiction. In Banks' first draft of ""Use of Weapons"" in 1974, his third attempt at a novel, the Culture was just a backdrop intended to show that the mercenary agent was working for the ""good guys"" and was responsible for his own misdeeds. At the time he persuaded his friend Ken MacLeod to read it and MacLeod tried to suggest improvements, but the book had too much purple prose and a very convoluted structure. In 1984, shortly after ""The Wasp Factory"" was published, MacLeod was asked to read ""Use of Weapons"" again, and"
"The Rabbit Factory The Rabbit Factory (2006) is the first novel by author Marshall Karp. It recounts the investigation by detectives Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs as they explore a series of murders directed at a fictional company Lamaar, a parody of Disney. First is the murder of the man wearing the ""Rambunctious Rabbit"" costume in the theme park (this is depicted on the book's cover). Karp published additional novels featuring Lomax and Biggs: ""Bloodthirsty"" (2007), ""Flipping Out"" (2009), and ""Cut, Paste, Kill"" (2010). In 2010, screenwriter Allan Loeb wrote an adaptation of the novel as a proposed television pilot"
"the comedian who put it on that pile of unsolicited correspondence which no famous person has time to answer. Industry in the Vale of Leven started closing even faster than in the rest of Britain. Westclox limited went into liquidation and Agnes did what our dynamic prime minister would do if the Thatcher family had to go on the dole: she hunted for part-time cleaning jobs. She worked for a while in the house of the comedian who had received her typescript a few years before, and got it back."" The first novel was published in 1984, and the famous"
"to write. We create nothing new—no one has ever imagined a new color—so what you are doing is revitalizing. You are remembering, then combining, altering. Artists who think they're creating new worlds are simply creating tiny versions of this world."" His inspirations include Dante, Shakespeare, Melville and Mark Twain. His first novel, published in 1977, was """". The 1983 novel ""Winter's Tale"" is a sometimes fantastic tale of early 20th century life in New York City. He published ""A Soldier of the Great War"" in 1991. ""Memoir from Antproof Case"", published in 1995, includes long comic diatribes against the effects"
"Wasp's Nest Wasp's Nest was a television play broadcast on the BBC Television Service on 18 June 1937. It was adapted from the short story of the same name by crime writer Agatha Christie which had first appeared in the ""Daily Mail"" on 20 November 1928 and first appeared in book form in the US collection ""Double Sin and Other Stories"" in 1961. It first appeared in a UK collection in ""Poirot's Early Cases"" in 1974. The play is unique in that it is the only instance of Christie adapting one of her works for television, a medium she later"
"it include ""Excession"" (1996), and ""Inversions"" (1998). He also published mainstream novels, including the highly controversial ""The Wasp Factory"" in 1984. Nobel prize winner Doris Lessing also published a sequence of five science fiction novels the ""Canopus in Argos: Archives"" between 1979 and 1983. Terry Pratchett is best known for his ""Discworld"" series of comic fantasy novels, that begins with ""The Colour of Magic"" (1983), and includes ""Mort"" (1987), ""Hogfather"" (1996), and ""Night Watch"" (2002). Pratchett's other most notable work is the 1990 novel ""Good Omens"". Philip Pullman's fantasy trilogy ""His Dark Materials"" comprises ""Northern Lights"" (1995), ""The Subtle Knife"""
"Wasp (novel) Wasp is a 1957 science fiction novel by English author Eric Frank Russell. Terry Pratchett (author of the ""Discworld"" series of fantasy books) stated that he ""can't imagine a funnier terrorists' handbook."" ""Wasp"" is generally considered Russell's best novel. The title of ""Wasp"" comes from the idea that the main character's actions and central purpose mimic that particular insect; just as something as small as a wasp can terrorise a much larger creature in control of a car to the point of causing a crash and killing the occupants, so the defeat of an enemy may be wrought"
"himself as an author and illustrator of natural history and children's books. His early work includes ""Butterflies in Britain"" (1943), ""A Book of Birds"" (1944), ""The Old Woman and the Pedlar"" (1944), ""The Tailor and the Mouse"" (1944), ""Wild Flowers"" (1944), ""Heads, Bodies & Legs"" with Denis Wirth-Miller (1946), and the collection of short stories ""Mr Postlethwaite's Reindeer"" (1945). Chopping's first novel, ""The Fly"" (Secker & Warburg, 1965) was recommended to its publisher by Angus Wilson, where David Farrar found it ""a perfectly disgusting concoction"". It was edited by Giles Gordon, who later wrote that he was determined to like"
"Animal Farm Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the Spanish Civil War. The Soviet Union, he believed, had become a brutal dictatorship, built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror. In a letter"
"correspondence secretary on his father's cattle farm. During this period he became determined to be a writer. His first literary success occurred with a short story entitled ""The Box,"" which was published in Commentary. It was followed by other short stories in Harpers Bazaar, the New Yorker, and other magazines. In February 1954, he married Margaret Pye, whom he had met while working in London. His first novel, The Trap, was released in 1955, followed by A Dance in the Sun in 1956. Both books drawn upon his childhood experiences. Together the two books earned him a yearlong creative writing"
"a recording of his music. He also wrote songs and played keyboards for a short-lived feminist cabaret group, Wanda and the Willy Warmers. He published his first novel, ""The Accidental Woman"", in 1987. In 1994 his fourth novel ""What a Carve Up!"" won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in France. It was followed by ""The House of Sleep"" which won the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Best Novel award and, in France, the Prix Médicis. As of 2016, Coe has published eleven novels. Besides novels, Coe has written a biography of the experimental"
"Wetware (novel) Wetware is a 1988 biopunk science fiction novel written by Rudy Rucker. It shared the Philip K. Dick Award in 1988 with ""Four Hundred Billion Stars"" by Paul J. McAuley. The novel is the second book in Rucker's Ware Tetralogy, preceded by ""Software"" in 1982 and followed by ""Freeware"" in 1997. Set in 2030–2031, ten years after the events of ""Software"", ""Wetware"" focuses on the attempt of an Edgar Allan Poe-obsessed bopper named Berenice to populate Earth with a robot/human hybrid called a ""meatbop"". Toward this end, she implants an embryo in a human woman living on the"
"writing his debut novel, which he completed during the creative writing course at the University of East Anglia. His first novel, ""The Harmony Silk Factory"", was published in 2005. After Malaysian journalists reported that he had been paid more than £500,000 for the novel, ""The Star"" and ""The New Straits Times"" called him the ""RM3.5 million man"", and local interest in his book deal continues today, even though the novelist himself has consistently denied the size of this advance, preferring to talk about the novel, which was longlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize and won the 2005 Whitbread Book"
"a work on a far larger scale."" His first novel, ""The Man Who Started Clean"", which told the story of a young man who had to recover his identity after a traumatic head injury in an automobile accident was published in 1937, the reviews were only mildly positive. In ""The Spectator"", Kate O'Brien wrote that ""It is all very carefully written—and nothing is missed or left out except that imaginative drive or passion which might have made a magnificent problem out of what is in fact only a neat piece of invention,"" and The New York Times reviewer assessed that"
"mere location"". Publishers Weekly also reviewed the book, writing ""Aw's prose, though often witty and taut, is not equally convincing in all its guises"". The Harmony Silk Factory The Harmony Silk Factory (2005) is Tash Aw's critically acclaimed first novel, set in 1940s British-ruled Malaya, which is now called Malaysia. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the Whitbread Book Awards for First Novel Award. Booklist called ""The Harmony Silk Factory"" ""an impressive contribution to a literature for which Conrad and Maugham are famous"". The Guardian said the book was ""a little rough and transparent in places"","
"The Harmony Silk Factory The Harmony Silk Factory (2005) is Tash Aw's critically acclaimed first novel, set in 1940s British-ruled Malaya, which is now called Malaysia. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the Whitbread Book Awards for First Novel Award. Booklist called ""The Harmony Silk Factory"" ""an impressive contribution to a literature for which Conrad and Maugham are famous"". The Guardian said the book was ""a little rough and transparent in places"", but that Aw ""writes with what seems like effortless fluidity"". Time Magazine wrote that Aw ""produced a tale of love and betrayal that transcends"
"George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, Imperial police officer, and critic whose work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism and outspoken support of democratic socialism. Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is best known for the allegorical novella ""Animal Farm"" (1945) and the dystopian novel ""Nineteen Eighty-Four"" (1949). His non-fiction works, including ""The Road to Wigan Pier"" (1937), documenting his experience of working class life in the north of England,"
"Iain Banks Iain Banks (16 February 1954 – 9 June 2013) was a Scottish author. He wrote mainstream fiction under the name Iain Banks and science fiction as Iain M. Banks, including the initial of his adopted middle name Menzies (). After the publication and success of ""The Wasp Factory"" (1984), Banks began to write on a full-time basis. His first science fiction book, ""Consider Phlebas"", was released in 1987, marking the start of the Culture series. His books have been adapted for theatre, radio and television. In 2008, ""The Times"" named Banks in their list of ""The 50 greatest"
"began to write her first book, which she set in Wales. She became head librarian in the Gardner, Massachusetts library in 1973.<ref name=20th> Nancy Bond Nancy Barbara Bond (born 1945) is an American author of children's literature. In 1977 her first book, ""A String in the Harp"", received a Newbery honor and the Welsh Tir na n-Og Award. It is fantasy novel with an element of folklore, set in West Wales. Nancy Barbara Bond was born January 8, 1945 in Bethesda, Maryland, and grew up near Concord, Massachusetts. When Bond was eight, the family spent a year in London while"
"first novel, ""Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill"", appeared serially in the ""Australian Journal"" in 1888, and was published in London in 1889 under the pseudonym of Tasma. It had an immediate success and was followed by ""In her Earliest Youth"" (1890), ""A Sydney Sovereign and other Tales"" (1890), The ""Penance of Portia James"" (1891), ""A Knight of the White Feather"" (1892), ""Not Counting the Cost"" (1895), and ""A Fiery Ordeal"" (1897). Couvreur's husband died in 1894 and Madame Couvreur took up his duties as correspondent of ""The Times"" at Brussels. She proved to be ""a conscientious painstaking journalist, keenly alive"
"alternated with idyllic summer days, the teamwork of the harvest, the delight of the young animals, made for the powerful experiences that inspired her to write her first novel ""A Dirty Death"". She had various jobs before becoming an author, such as pre-natal instructor, marriage counselor, and funeral director, all of which gave her various human and social experiences, which she uses in her books. In 1992, she founded Praxis Books, a small British press. The books are set in real villages (Duntisbourne Abbots, Frampton Mansell, Blockley, Temple Guiting, Lower Slaughter, Cold Aston and Hampnett, Broad Campden, Snowshill and Winchcombe,"
"career as a writer really began, however, when he made a bet with his wife that he could write a better mystery novel than the ones they were reading during a rainy family vacation. He drew on his professional experience as a CPA and wrote his first novel, ""Death and Taxes"", featuring San Francisco tax expert and reluctant detective James ""Whit"" Whitney. It was published by Macmillan in 1941 and he won five dollars from Elva. Three more Whitney novels soon followed: ""Shear the Black Sheep"" (Macmillan, 1942), ""Bullets for the Bridegroom"" (Macmillan, 1944) and ""It Ain't Hay"" (Simon &"
"Fredric Warburg Fredric John Warburg (27 November 1898 – 25 May 1981) was a British publisher best known for his association with the author George Orwell. During a career spanning a large part of the 20th century and ending in 1971 Warburg published Orwell's ""Animal Farm"" (1945) as well as ""Nineteen Eighty-Four"" (1949), and works by other leading figures such as Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka. Other notable publications included ""The Third Eye"" by Lobsang Rampa, Pierre Boulle's ""The Bridge over the River Kwai"", Adolf Hitler's ""Mein Kampf"" and William Shirer's ""The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich"". Warburg"
"namely The Piebald Princess, The Chestnut Chase, The Black Mare of Devils Hill and the last in the series, Decision Day for the Dapple Grey. By 1997 he had also penned a trilogy science fiction novels ""First Contact"", ""Second Nature"" and ""Third Degree"". His most recent work was another quiz book, this time to tie in with the film """". Nigel Robinson Nigel Robinson is an English author, known for such works as the ""First Contact"" series. Nigel was born in Preston, Lancashire and attended St Thomas More school. Robinson's first published book was ""The Tolkien Quiz Book"" in 1981,"
"circumstances."" Animal Farm Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the Spanish Civil War. The Soviet Union, he believed, had become a brutal dictatorship, built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror. In a"
"the National Academy of Sciences (1976). He was short listed in 1964 for the National Book Award for ""Wasp Farm"". His work includes 255 scientific papers, 40 popular articles and 15 books, including ""Wasp Farm"" and ""The Pleasures of Entomology"". He coauthored the book ""Wasps"" with Mary Jane West-Eberhard. Several of his books, including ""Life on a Little Known Planet"", are among the most popular works on entomology for a general audience. His publications also include works on the history of biology, Australian natural history, and the American West; in addition, he published an entomology textbook and a volume of"
"Redwood City, California. Returning to college under the ""Women in Engineering Program"" at the University of California, Davis, she then joined IBM in San Jose, California as an electrical engineer. Inspired since childhood by Olaf Stapledon's novel ""Sirius: A Tale of Love and Discord"", about a sheep dog with human-level intelligence, she began writing ""Ratha's Creature"", the first novel of the ""Named series"". Published in 1983 by Margaret K. McElderry Books, this first novel won the International Reading Association's Children's Book Award and the PEN United States Literary Award for that year. ""Ratha's Creature"" was also adapted for television animation"