Slaughterhouse-Five

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.... Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument. The word "philosophy" comes from the Greek φιλοσοφία , which literally means "love of wisdom". The introduction of the terms "philosopher" and "philosophy" has been ascribed to the Greek thinker Pythagoras. The ascription is said to be based on a passage in a lost work of Herakleides Pontikos, a disciple of Aristotle. It is considered to be part of the widespread body of legends of Pythagoras of this time. "Philosopher" was understood as a word which contrasted with "sophist" . Traveling sophists or "wise men" were important in Classical Greece, often earning money as teachers, whereas philosophers are "lovers of wisdom" and not professionals. The main areas of study in philosophy today include epistemology, logic, metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics.
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A war novel is a novel in which the primary action takes place in a field of armed combat, or in a domestic setting where the characters are... preoccupied with the preparations for, or recovery from, war. It is sometimes referred to as military fiction. The war novel's main roots lie in the epic poetry of the classical and medieval periods, especially Homer's The Iliad, Virgil's The Aeneid, the Old English saga Beowulf, and different versions of the legends of King Arthur. All of these epics were concerned with preserving the history or mythology of conflicts between different societies, while providing an accessible narrative that could reinforce the collective memory of a people. Other important influences on the war novel included the tragedies of such dramatists as Euripides, Seneca the Younger, Christopher Marlowe, and Shakespeare. Shakespeare's Henry V provided a model for how the history, tactics, and ethics of war could be combined in an essentially fictional framework.
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Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but... rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical, cinematic or musical work. Fiction contrasts with non-fiction, which deals exclusively with factual events, descriptions, observations, etc. . Realistic fiction, although untrue, could actually happen. Some events, people, and places may even be real. This is termed 'Faction'. It can be possible that in the future imagined events could physically happen. For example, Jules Verne's novel From The Earth To The Moon, which at that time was just a product of his rich imagination, was proven possible in 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the Moon, and the team returned safely to Earth. Realist fiction strives to make the reader feel as if they're reading something that is actually happening—something that though not real, is described in a believable way that helps the reader make a picture as if it were an actual event.
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Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel... could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the need for the traveler to experience the intervening period . Any technological device – whether fictional or hypothetical – that would be used to achieve time travel is commonly known as a time machine. Although time travel has been a common plot device in science fiction since the late 19th century, and the theories of special and general relativity suggest methods for forms of one-way travel into the future via time dilation, it is currently unknown whether the laws of physics would allow time travel into the past. Such backward time travel would have the potential to introduce paradoxes related to causality, and a variety of hypotheses have been proposed to resolve them, as discussed in the sections Paradoxes and Rules of time travel below.
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