Information: - Non-fiction or nonfiction is content (sometimes, in the form of a story) whose creator, in good faith, assumes responsibility for the truth or accuracy of the events, people, and/or information presented. In contrast, a story whose creator explicitly leaves open if and how the work refers to reality is usually classified as fiction. Nonfiction, which may be presented either objectively or subjectively, is traditionally one of the two main divisions of narratives (and, specifically, prose writing), the other traditional division being fiction, which contrasts with nonfiction by dealing in information, events, and characters expected to be partly or largely imaginary. - Literature, in its broadest sense, is any single body of written works. More restrictively, it is writing considered as an art form, or any single writing deemed to have artistic or intellectual value, often due to deploying language in ways that differ from ordinary usage. Its Latin root "literatura"/"litteratura" (derived itself from "littera": "letter" or "handwriting") was used to refer to all written accounts, though contemporary definitions extend the term to include texts that are spoken or sung (oral literature). Literature can be classified according to whether it is fiction or non-fiction and whether it is poetry or prose; it can be further distinguished according to major forms such as the novel, short story or drama; and works are often categorized according to historical periods or their adherence to certain aesthetic features or expectations (genre). - A novel is a long narrative, normally in prose, which describes fictional characters and events, usually in the form of a sequential story. - A society is a group of people involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societies are characterized by patterns of relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its constituent members. In the social sciences, a larger society often evinces stratification or dominance patterns in subgroups. - A role-playing game (RPG and sometimes roleplaying game) is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting or through a process of structured decision-making or character development. Actions taken within many games succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines. - Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific accuracy. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s "Islands of Space" in "Astounding Science Fiction". The complementary term soft science fiction, formed by analogy to hard science fiction, first appeared in the late 1970s. The term is formed by analogy to the popular distinction between the "hard" (natural) and "soft" (social) sciences. Science fiction critic Gary Westfahl argues that neither term is part of a rigorous taxonomy; instead they are approximate ways of characterizing stories that reviewers and commentators have found useful. - The Culture series is a science fiction series written by Scottish author Iain M. Banks. The stories center on the Culture, a utopian, post-scarcity space communist society of humanoids, aliens, and very advanced artificial intelligences living in anarchist habitats spread across the Milky Way galaxy. The main theme of the novels is the dilemmas that an idealistic hyperpower faces in dealing with civilizations that do not share its ideals, and whose behavior it sometimes finds repulsive. In some of the stories, action takes place mainly in non-Culture environments, and the leading characters are often on the fringes of (or non-members of) the Culture, sometimes acting as agents of Culture plans to civilize the galaxy. - Extraterrestrial life, also called alien life (or, if it is a sentient or relatively complex individual, an "extraterrestrial" or "alien"), is life that does not originate from Earth. These as-yet-hypothetical life forms may range from simple single-celled organisms to beings with civilizations far more advanced than humanity. Although many scientists expect extraterrestrial life to exist, there is no unambiguous evidence for its existence so far. The science of extraterrestrial life is known as exobiology. - A utopia is an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens. The opposite of a utopia is a dystopia. - A synonym is a word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word or phrase in the same language. Words that are synonyms are said to be synonymous, and the state of being a synonym is called synonymy. The word comes from Ancient Greek "syn" ("with") and "onoma" ("name"). An example of synonyms are the words "begin", "start", "commence", "initiate", "fun", "pleasing" . Words can be synonymous when meant in certain senses, even if they are not synonymous in all of their senses. For example, if one talks about a "long time" or an "extended time", "long" and "extended" are synonymous within that context. Synonyms with exact meaning share a seme or denotational sememe, whereas those with inexactly similar meanings share a broader denotational or connotational sememe and thus overlap within a semantic field. Some academics call the former type cognitive synonyms to distinguish them from the latter type, which they call near-synonyms. - The Culture is a fictional interstellar anarchist utopian society created by the Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, which features in a number of his space opera novels and works of short fiction, collectively called the Culture series. - Animation is the process of making the illusion of motion and the illusion of change by means of the rapid display of a sequence of images that minimally differ from each other. The illusionas in motion pictures in generalis thought to rely on the phi phenomenon. Animators are artists who specialize in the creation of animation. Animation can be recorded with either analogue media, a flip book, motion picture film, video tape, digital media, including formats with animated GIF, Flash animation, and digital video. To display animation, a digital camera, computer, or projector are used along with new technologies that are produced. - Literary fiction comprises fictional works that hold literary merit; that is, they involve social commentary, or political criticism, or focus on the human condition. Literary fiction is deliberately written in dialogue with existing works, created with the above aims in mind and is focused more on themes than on plot, and it is common for literary fiction to be taught and discussed in schools and universities. - Time travel is the concept of movement (such as by a human) between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space, typically using a hypothetical device known as a time machine, in the form of a vehicle or of a portal connecting distant points in time. Time travel is a recognized concept in philosophy and fiction, but traveling to an arbitrary point in time has a very limited support in theoretical physics, and usually only in conjunction with quantum mechanics or wormholes, also known as Einstein-Rosen bridges. In a more narrow sense, one-way time travel into the future via time dilation is a well-understood phenomenon within the frameworks of special relativity and general relativity, but advancing a large amount of time is not feasible with current technology. The concept was touched upon in various earlier works of fiction, but was popularized by H. G. Wells' 1895 novel "The Time Machine", which moved the concept of time travel into the public imagination, and it remains a popular subject in science fiction. - Fantasy is a fiction genre set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Most fantasy uses magic or other supernatural elements as a main plot element, theme, or setting. Magic and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds. Fantasy is generally distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror by the expectation that it steers clear of scientific and macabre themes, respectively, though there is a great deal of overlap between the three, all of which are subgenres of speculative fiction. - Fiction is the classification for any story or universe derived from imaginationin other words, not based strictly on history or fact. Fiction can be expressed in a variety of formats, including writings, live performances, films, television programs, animations, video games, and role-playing games, though the term originally and most commonly refers to the narrative forms of literature (see "literary" fiction), including the novel, novella, short story, and play. Fiction constitutes an act of creative invention, so that faithfulness to reality is not typically assumed; in other words, fiction is not expected to present only characters who are actual people or descriptions that are factually true. The context of fiction is generally open to interpretation, due to fiction's freedom from any necessary embedding in reality; however, some fictional works are claimed to be, or marketed as, historically or factually accurate, complicating the traditional distinction between fiction and non-fiction. Fiction is a classification or category, rather than a specific mode or genre, unless used in a narrower sense as a synonym for a particular literary fiction form. - Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. - Excession , first published in 1996 , is Scottish writer Iain M. Banks 's fourth science fiction novel to feature the Culture , a fictional interstellar society . It concerns the response of the Culture and other interstellar societies to an unprecedented alien artifact , the Excession of the title . The book is largely about the response of the Culture 's Minds ( AIs with enormous intellectual and physical capabilities and distinctive personalities ) to the Excession itself and the way in which another society , the Affront , whose systematic brutality horrifies the Culture , tries to use the Excession to increase its power . As in Banks ' other Culture novels the main themes are the moral dilemmas which confront a hyperpower and how biological characters find ways to give their lives meaning in a post-scarcity society which is presided over by benign super-intelligent machines . The book features a large collection of Culture ship names , some of which give subtle clues about the roles these ships ' Minds play in the story . In terms of style , the book is also notable for the way in which many important conversations between Minds resemble email messages complete with headers . - Culture can be defined in numerous ways. In the words of anthropologist E.B. Tylor, it is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." Alternatively, in a contemporary variant, "Culture is defined as a social domain that emphasizes the practices, discourses and material expressions, which, over time, express the continuities and discontinuities of social meaning of a life held in common." - Science fiction (often shortened to SF, sci-fi or scifi) is a genre of speculative fiction, typically dealing with imaginative concepts such as futuristic science and technology, space travel, time travel, faster than light travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life. Science fiction often explores the potential consequences of scientific and other innovations, and has been called a "literature of ideas." It usually avoids the supernatural, and unlike the related genre of fantasy, historically science fiction stories were intended to have a grounding in science-based fact or theory at the time the story was created, but this connection is now limited to hard science fiction. - A short story is a piece of prose fiction that can be read in one sitting. Emerging from earlier oral storytelling traditions in the 17th century, the short story has grown to encompass a body of work so diverse as to defy easy characterization. At its most prototypical the short story features a small cast of named characters, and focuses on a self-contained incident with the intent of evoking a "single effect" or mood. In doing so, short stories make use of plot, resonance, and other dynamic components to a far greater degree than is typical of an anecdote, yet to a far lesser degree than a novel. While the short story is largely distinct from the novel, authors of both generally draw from a common pool of literary techniques. - A novella is a work of written, fictional, narrative prose normally longer than a short story but shorter than a novel. The English word ""novella" derives from the Italian "novella", feminine of "novello", which means "new". The novella is a common literary genre in several European languages. - Writing is a medium of human communication that represents language and emotion through the inscription or recording of signs and symbols. In most languages, writing is a complement to speech or spoken language. Writing is not a language but a form of technology that developed as tools developed with human society. Within a language system, writing relies on many of the same structures as speech, such as vocabulary, grammar and semantics, with the added dependency of a system of signs or symbols. The result of writing is generally called "text", and the recipient of text is called a reader. Motivations for writing include publication, storytelling, correspondence and diary. Writing has been instrumental in keeping history, maintaining culture, dissemination of knowledge through the media and the formation of legal systems. - Speculative fiction is a broad umbrella genre denoting any narrative fiction with supernatural or futuristic elements; this encompasses the genres of science fiction, fantasy, horror, alternative history, magic realism, and superhero fiction, as well as combinations of the previous genres. It typically strays strongly from reality and so may feature fictional types of beings like mythical creatures and supernatural entities, technologies that do not exist in real life like time machines and interstellar spaceships, or magical or otherwise scientifically inexplicable elements. The term's popularity is sometimes attributed to Robert Heinlein, who referenced it in 1947 in an editorial essay, although there are prior mentions of speculative fiction, or its variant "speculative literature". - Institutions are "stable, valued, recurring patterns of behavior". As structures or mechanisms of social order, they govern the behaviour of a set of individuals within a given community. Institutions are identified with a social purpose, transcending individuals and intentions by mediating the rules that govern living behavior. - A film, also called a movie, motion picture, theatrical film or photoplay, is a series of still images which, when shown on a screen, creates the illusion of moving images due to the phi phenomenon. This optical illusion causes the audience to perceive continuous motion between separate objects viewed rapidly in succession. The process of filmmaking is both an art and an industry. A film is created by photographing actual scenes with a motion picture camera; by photographing drawings or miniature models using traditional animation techniques; by means of CGI and computer animation; or by a combination of some or all of these techniques and other visual effects. - The supernatural (Medieval Latin: "superntrlis": "supra" "above" + "naturalis" "natural", first used: 15201530 AD) includes all that cannot be explained by science or the laws of nature, including things characteristic of or relating to ghosts, gods, or other supernatural beings, or to things beyond nature. What is the relationship between 'excession' and 'culture series'?
series