title: Breitbart News

text: "Breitbart News" livestreamed a widely viewed video on July 27, 2020, featuring a group called America's Frontline Doctors, that made dubious claims related to the COVID-19 pandemic and touted hydroxychloroquine as a cure. The group was led by Dr. Simone Gold, reportedly a Trump supporter who has advocated the use of hydroxychloroquine on conservative talk radio and podcasts. President Donald Trump shared several versions of the video with his 84 million Twitter followers before they were taken down. The video was removed by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for violating policies against COVID-19 misinformation. The president's son Donald Trump Jr. was restricted from Twitter for 12 hours for sharing it. The video event was funded by the right-wing group Tea Party Patriots. The video had 14 million views and was shared 600,000 times on Facebook before it was taken down. "Breitbart" did not immediately respond to CNBC when asked about the video being removed by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.


title: Breitbart News

text: In August 2020, a "Breitbart" article cited a press release by Michigan secretary of state Jocelyn Benson about the state rejecting over 800 ballots cast by voters who died before the date of the election. The article was written in a way suggesting that the ballots were not legitimately cast and thus evidence of extensive voter fraud. In fact, the voters in question died after submitting their ballots. The article was shared by Donald Trump Jr. on Twitter.


title: Stephen Tobolowsky

text: Stephen Harold Tobolowsky (born May 30, 1951) is an American character actor. He is known for film roles such as insurance agent Ned Ryerson in "Groundhog Day" and amnesiac Sammy Jankis in "Memento", as well as such television characters as Commissioner Hugo Jarry ("Deadwood"), Bob Bishop ("Heroes"), Sandy Ryerson ("Glee"), Stu Beggs ("Californication" and "White Famous"), "Action" Jack Barker ("Silicon Valley"), Dr. Leslie Berkowitz ("One Day at a Time"), and Principal Earl Ball ("The Goldbergs").


title: Stephen Tobolowsky

text: Tobolowsky has a monthly audio podcast, "The Tobolowsky Files", of autobiographical stories of his acting and personal life. In 2015, he co-hosted a short-lived second podcast, "Big Problems – An Advice Podcast", with David Chen. He has also authored three books: "The Dangerous Animals Club", "Cautionary Tales", and "My Adventures With God".


title: Stephen Tobolowsky

text: He grew up creating imaginative games with his brother, and his story "The Dangerous Animals Club" paints a picture of how unsupervised children in the 20th century could amuse themselves. He showed talent at baseball, but a serious childhood illness ended his career as an athlete before it began. He graduated from Justin F. Kimball High School and Southern Methodist University. He received a master's degree from the University of Illinois in 1975.


title: Stephen Tobolowsky

text: He is a cousin of former Dallas attorney Ira Tobolowsky, who was murdered in his home in 2016, a crime which remains unsolved. Another cousin (and Ira's brother) is the sculptor George Tobolowsky.


title: Stephen Tobolowsky

text: Stephen Tobolowsky also played in a band called A Cast of Thousands, which had two songs, "Red, White and Blue" and "I Heard a Voice Last Night", on a compilation of local Dallas bands called "A New Hi". Both of these songs featured Steve Vaughan on guitar, who would be later known as Stevie Ray Vaughan.


title: Stephen Tobolowsky

text: Tobolowsky has appeared in over 200 films, plus many television projects. He has also worked in the theater, directing and acting in plays in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. He directed one film, "Two Idiots in Hollywood", based on his play of the same name. He also co-wrote the film "True Stories" with David Byrne and Beth Henley. He was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play for the 2002 revival of "Morning’s at Seven".


title: Stephen Tobolowsky

text: On October 29, 2009, Tobolowsky started a new podcast on "/Film" called "The Tobolowsky Files", where he tells stories, in a similar fashion to Tobolowsky's film "Stephen Tobolowsky's Birthday Party". The show was picked up by Public Radio International in 2012.


title: Ghostland

text: Ghostland (also known as Incident in a Ghostland) is a 2018 horror film written and directed by Pascal Laugier. "Ghostland" was shown in competition at the Festival international du film fantastique de Gérardmer, where it won three awards, including the Grand Prize.


title: Ghostland

text: A woman named Colleen travels with her teenage daughters Beth and Vera to their recently deceased aunt Clarisse's secluded home after they inherited it in her will. Beth reads an article about a string of home invasions where parents are murdered, but daughters are spared. Unbeknownst to the family, they are stalked by someone driving a candy truck.


title: Ghostland

text: Shortly after they settle into the house, two intruders break in and attack the mother and daughters. One of them is a large mentally impaired man known as the Fat Man. The other intruder is known as the Candy Truck Woman. Vera is then sexually abused by the Fat Man, while Beth tries to get away but she runs into the Woman. When Beth asks what the Candy Truck Woman wants, she replies, "We just wanna play with dolls." Colleen recovers and kills both intruders.


title: Ghostland

text: Sixteen years later, Beth is now a successful horror fiction author living in Chicago with her husband and son. She appears on a talk show to promote her new novel "Incident in a Ghostland", based on her experience that night. She receives a frantic phone call from her sister, who has suffered from delusions since the trauma, begging her to return to the house where she still lives with their mother. When Beth arrives, Colleen explains that Vera remains unable to move on and continues reliving that night, locking herself in a padded room in the basement. Beth begins to experience strange dreams, and Vera claims that their tormentors are still trying to get them.


title: Ghostland

text: During an episode, Beth finds Vera chained and made up to look like a doll. Colleen calls an ambulance and tells Beth not to listen to Vera. Beth falls asleep and is captured by the Candy Truck Woman. She discovers bruises all over her beaten face and finds Vera also beaten up in the basement. She blames her for the wounds and Vera begs her sister to face the truth. Beth recalls a memory, and it is revealed that the Candy Truck Woman actually killed their mother that night and Beth has been imagining her adult life all this time to disassociate.


title: Ghostland

text: In reality, she and Vera are still teenagers and the Fat Man and Candy Truck Woman are holding her and Vera captive in Clarisse's home. The Candy Truck Woman dresses Beth like a doll, leaving her in a room littered with dolls. The Fat Man begins molesting and torturing the dolls. When he gets to Beth, she fights back and flees. She frees Vera and they escape the house. They make it to a road where two state troopers help them, reporting the incident to dispatch. However, both are gunned down by the Candy Truck Woman, who recaptures the girls.


title: Ghostland

text: Beth mentally retreats back to her adulthood fantasy. At a cocktail party, she meets her idol, H.P. Lovecraft, who tells Beth that her novel is a masterpiece. Beth sees Vera screaming for help and decides to return to rescue Vera. She escapes from the Fat Man and initiates a violent fight with the Candy Truck Woman. Another state trooper arrives in time to gun down both the Fat Man and the Candy Truck Woman. After authorities arrive, Beth sees a vision of her mother waving at them from the house as the sisters are taken to the hospital.


title: Ghostland

text: "Ghostland" is a Canadian and French co-production with Canada providing 69.12% of funding and France providing 30.88%. The film was predominantly shot in Canada.


title: Ghostland

text: In December 2016, actress Taylor Hickson was facially disfigured while shooting a scene for the film. She was rushed to the hospital and received 70 stitches, but was permanently scarred. In March 2018, Hickson sued the film's production company Incident Productions over lost work as a result of the incident. Hickson claimed in the lawsuit that "in the course of shooting the scene, the director Pascal Laugier, consistently told Hickson to pound harder on the glass with her fists". While filming another take, the lawsuit states:


title: Ghostland

text: Hickson, in the lawsuit, states that the company failed to take "any and all reasonable steps to ensure that industry standards and practices were adhered to, including but not limited to the use of safety glass and/or stunt doubles as appropriate."


title: Ghostland

text: Independent of the pending lawsuits, the Winnipeg-based film company Incident Productions, Inc. pled guilty for "failing to ensure the safety and welfare of a worker under the Workplace Safety and Health Act," and was fined $40,000 by the province of Manitoba.


title: Ghostland

text: "Ghostland" was first shown in competition on 3 February 2018 at the Festival international du film fantastique de Gérardmer. "Ghostland" won three film awards at the festival, including the Grand Prize, Audience Award, and the SyFy Award. The SyFy award was chosen by five bloggers at the festival. Frédéric Strauss of "Télérama" noted that this was the second French co-production in a row that dominated the awards at the festival with the previous years big winner being "Raw" by Julia Ducournau. The film received a theatrical release in France on 14 March 2018. In some territories, the film was released as "Ghostland" and in others as "Incident in a Ghostland".


title: Ghostland

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of , based on reviews with an average rating of . The site's critics' consensus reads: ""Incident in a Ghost Land" may satisfy horror fans in search of a nasty kick, but it's narratively flawed and decidedly not for the squeamish." Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 44 out of 100, based on 4 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Ghostland

text: "The Hollywood Reporter" declared the film to be a "taut—if somewhat corny—slasher flick" and it was "neither for the faint of heart nor the sharp of mind". The review noted the dialogue, finding that "for [the director's] second film in English after 2012’s "The Tall Man", he could have brushed up more on his dialogue, which rings awfully flat." Dennis Harvey of "Variety" declared that "Ghostland" "all seems slick, intense, and unpleasant in the same hollow way "Martyrs" did, because all the cruelty is so meaningless. Replacing that film's empty pseudo-mysticism are villains for whom Laugier doesn't bother providing any motivation or backstory." Simon Abrams of "The Village Voice" wrote that the film was a "disturbing and effective critique of misogynist torture porn," it "may sometimes play like a mindlessly gory slasher clone, but Laugier’s tormented girls consistently prove to be stronger than their brutalized bodies."


title: Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress

text: An anime theatrical film that is set six months after the anime series, titled "Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress: The Battle of Unato" premiered in May 2019. A Netflix version was released as a three-part series in 2019.


title: Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress

text: A mysterious virus appears during the Industrial Revolution that transforms infected humans into and rapidly spreads. "Kabane" are aggressive, undead creatures that cannot be defeated unless the glowing golden heart, which is protected by a layer of iron, is pierced, or an important body part is completely severed (such as the head). Unfortunately, most melee weapons and the steam-pressure guns used by the are not very effective against them.


title: Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress

text: On the island country , people have built fortress-like "stations" to shelter themselves from these creatures. People access the stations and transport wares between them with the help of . One day, a "hayajirō" hijacked by the "kabane" crashes into Aragane Station and they overrun the city. A young engineer called Ikoma uses the opportunity to test with success his anti-"kabane" weapon, the , but is infected in the process, although he manages to resist the virus and become a , a human-"kabane" hybrid. Assisted by , another "Kabaneri" who appears to help them, Ikoma and the other survivors of the station board a "hayajirō" named and depart to seek shelter elsewhere, fighting the hordes of "kabane" along the way.


title: Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress

text: "Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress" was directed by Tetsurō Araki and written by Ichirō Ōkouchi, with music by Hiroyuki Sawano and original character designs by Haruhiko Mikimoto. The series was broadcast on Fuji TV's Noitamina block from April 8 to June 30, 2016, with a total of 12 episodes. A prologue for the anime premiered for a week in theaters across Japan starting March 18, 2016. Amazon streamed the series on their Amazon Prime Instant Video service. Two compilation films premiered in Japanese theaters on December 31, 2016, and January 7, 2017. Crunchyroll and Funimation co-released the anime on Blu-ray and DVD in the United States; Crunchyroll also acquired the merchandise rights.


title: Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress

text: An anime theatrical film that is set six months after the anime series, titled , premiered on May 10, 2019. A Netflix version was released as a three-part series in 2019.


title: Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress

text: Three feature length anime theatrical films were released between 2016 and 2019. The first two films, which are recaps of the first and second halves of the TV series, premiered in Japanese theaters on December 31, 2016, and January 7, 2017. The third film, titled "Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress: The Battle of Unato", takes place six months after the events of the TV series and revolves around the Battle of Unato. It premiered on May 10, 2019. "The Battle of Unato" was streamed internationally on September 13, 2019 as a Netflix original consisting of three episodes.


title: Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress

text: A manga adaptation, illustrated by Shirō Yoshida, was serialized in Mag Garden's "Monthly Comic Garden" magazine from May 2, 2016 to November 5, 2018. Mag Garden released four "tankōbon" volumes from December 10, 2016 and December 10, 2018.


title: Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress

text: A mobile game developed by TriFort, Inc. and published by DMM Games titled was released on December 19, 2018 for Android and iOS, featuring an animated opening sequence by Wit Studio.


title: Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress

text: The soundtrack was composed by Hiroyuki Sawano and was released by Aniplex on May 18, 2016. The opening theme is "Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress" by Egoist and the ending theme is "ninelie" by Aimer with chelly. For episode 11, the ending theme is "Through My Blood <AM>" by Aimer.


title: Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress

text: The series won the 2016 Newtype Anime Awards for Best TV Anime, Best Soundtrack, Best Character Design, Best Screenplay and Best Studio.


title: Good Omens

text: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch is a 1990 novel written as a collaboration between the English authors Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.


title: Good Omens

text: The book is a comedy about the birth of the son of Satan and the coming of the End Times. There are attempts by the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley to sabotage the coming of the end times, having grown accustomed to their comfortable surroundings in England. One subplot features a mixup at the small country hospital on the day of birth and the growth of the Antichrist, Adam, who grows up with the wrong family, in the wrong country village. Another subplot concerns the summoning of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, each a big personality in their own right. In 2003, the novel was listed at number 68 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.


title: Good Omens

text: Aziraphale, an angel (originally a guardian of the gates of Eden), and Crowley, a demon (originally the serpent who tempted Eve) have lived on Earth since its creation. Over the millennia, they have formed an odd friendship and taken a liking to humanity. One night, the forces of Hell deliver the infant Antichrist to Crowley, with instructions to swap him with the son of an American diplomat stationed in Britain. Crowley realizes this means that the Apocalypse is coming and persuades Aziraphale to help him postpone it. Together, they decide to influence the Antichrist's upbringing by posing as a nanny and a gardener so that he can never decide between Good and Evil.


title: Good Omens

text: However, due to several misunderstandings at the hospital, the real Antichrist is actually another boy, Adam Young, who grows up unnoticed in idyllic Lower Tadfield, Oxfordshire, together with his three close friends – Pepper, Wensleydale and Brian. As the foretold end of the world nears, Adam begins to unknowingly use his reality warping powers, changing the world to fit his vision of how things ought to be, such as raising the lost continent of Atlantis after reading about it in a conspiracy theory magazine, summoning UFOs after talking to his friends about aliens, and having the Amazon rainforest reclaim land lost to urban development. In the meantime, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse assemble: War (a war correspondent), Famine (a dietician and fast-food tycoon), Pollution (Pestilence having retired after the discovery of penicillin) and Death (a biker).


title: Good Omens

text: Aziraphale and Crowley realize their mistake and begin a frantic search for the Antichrist. Also looking for the boy is Anathema Device, a witch who is trying to prevent the Apocalypse as predicted by her ancestor, Agnes Nutter. Agnes' prophecies are perfectly accurate, but so cryptic and specific as to be nearly useless. Anathema is joined by Newton Pulsifer, sole recruit of the Witchfinder Army (and descendent of Thou-Shall-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifer, the Witchfinder who burnt Agnes Nutter at the stake), who has been sent to investigate the strange phenomena around Tadfield by Sergeant Shadwell, the Army's only other member. Everyone, including Shadwell's medium neighbour, Madame Tracy, converges at Tadfield Military Base, where the Four Horsemen are starting a world-ending nuclear war by tampering with the computer systems.


title: Good Omens

text: Amid the increasing chaos, Adam is overcome with visions of greatness and attempts to split the world between his gang. When his friends react with horror at what he is becoming, Adam comes to his senses and decides to stop the Apocalypse. He and his friends make their way to the military base and defeat three of the Four Horsemen, with Death accepting defeat and vanishing. A furious Satan starts to ascend to Earth, but Adam, having heard that "his father is coming", twists reality so that his human adoptive father arrives instead, then modifies everyone's memories of recent events.


title: Good Omens

text: With Armageddon averted, Crowley and Aziraphale muse that this was God's plan all along and speculate that the real apocalyptic conflict will be between humanity and the combined forces of Heaven and Hell. Madame Tracy marries Sergeant Shadwell, effectively disbanding the Witchfinder Army. Anathema begins a relationship with Newton and receives a second book of Agnes' prophecies, but decides to burn it so as not to be bound by them. Finally, Adam uses his powers to evade his father's grounding and visit the circus with his friends.


title: Good Omens

text: Gaiman and Pratchett had known each other since 1985. Gaiman, inspired by his success in writing a biography of Douglas Adams ("Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"), and in observing Adams work at close quarters decided to try his hand at novel writing, and sent a piece of work to a number of friends, including Terry Pratchett for feedback. Pratchett responded positively eight months later. According to Gaiman, he originally began the book as a parody of Richmal Crompton's "William" books, named "William the Antichrist", but it gradually outgrew the original idea. It was their own idea, not that of their publisher, to collaborate on a novel.


title: Good Omens

text: We were both living in England when we wrote it. At an educated guess, although neither of us ever counted, Terry probably wrote around 60,000 "raw" and I wrote 45,000 "raw" words of "Good Omens", with, on the whole, Terry taking more of the plot with Adam and the Them in, and me doing more of the stuff that was slightly more tangential to the story, except that broke down pretty quickly and when we got towards the end we swapped characters so that we'd both written everyone by the time it was done, but then we also rewrote and footnoted each other's bits as we went along, and rolled up our sleeves to take the first draft to the second (quite a lot of words), and, by the end of it, neither of us was entirely certain who had written what. It was indeed plotted in long daily phone calls, and we would post floppy disks (and this was back in 1988 when floppy disks really were pretty darn floppy) back and forth.


title: Good Omens

text: I think this is an honest account of the process of writing "Good Omens". It was fairly easy to keep track of because of the way we sent disks to one another, and because I was Keeper of the Official Master Copy I can say that I wrote a bit over two thirds of "Good Omens". However, we were on the phone to each other every day, at least once. If you have an idea during a brainstorming session with another guy, whose idea is it? One guy goes and writes 2,000 words after thirty minutes on the phone, what exactly is the process that's happening? I did most of the physical writing because:


title: Good Omens

text: Initially, I did most of Adam and the Them and Neil did most of the Four Horsemen, and everything else kind of got done by whoever – by the end, large sections were being done by a composite creature called Terryandneil, whoever was actually hitting the keys. By agreement, I am allowed to say that Agnes Nutter, her life and death, was completely and utterly mine. And Neil proudly claims responsibility for the maggots. Neil's had a major influence on the opening scenes, me on the ending. In the end, it was this book done by two guys, who shared the money equally and did it for fun and wouldn't do it again for a big clock.


title: Good Omens

text: The United States edition of "Good Omens" had numerous alterations to the text. The most significant alteration to the main text is the addition of an extra 700-word section just before the end, dealing with what happened to the character of Warlock, the American diplomat's son, who was swapped with Adam. The American edition also adds numerous footnotes not found in British editions.


title: Good Omens

text: The Dutch translation of "Good Omens" contains a preface by the translator wherein he asserts that no extra footnotes were added to clarify matters that might be unclear to a modern audience – annotated with footnotes explaining "omen" and "Crowley".


title: Good Omens

text: In the French version, some characters were given French-sounding names. Agnes Nutter became Agnès Barge (barge is French for nutter), Anathema Device became Anathème Bidule (Bidule being French for Device). Crowley became Rampa (as 'Crawly' became 'Crowley', 'Rampant' became 'Rampa'), after the infamous author of "The Third Eye", T. L. Rampa. The French publisher of "Good Omens" (J'ai Lu) was also the French publisher of the T. L. Rampa books.


title: Good Omens

text: In the Czech version of the book, the names of Agnes, Anathema, the Satanist nuns, Pepper and some minor characters were translated too. The book contains many extra footnotes as an explanation to some of the phrases that were translated more literally than usual and to add new jokes (for example the part where Anathema meets Adam and tells him she is an occultist, noting: "You were thinking 'Nothin' wrong with my eyes, they don't need examining,' weren't you?" was accompanied by a footnote: "To those who understood what was the point, congratulations. For those whom it took as long as it took me: The Dictionary's definition: Oculist – rather an old-fashioned word for an ophthalmologist.").


title: Good Omens

text: The names of Agnes Nutter and her descendant Anathema Device were inspired by two of the victims of the 1612 Pendle witch trials, Alice Nutter and Elizabeth Device. Gaiman confirmed the homage in a 2016 tweet.


title: Good Omens

text: In 1989, a year before the completed novel was published, Gaiman and Pratchett visited the US for the World Fantasy Convention in Seattle, and shared a hotel room to save money. Unable to sleep at night due to jet lag, and not having anything else to talk about, they started plotting out the sequel to "Good Omens". "668—The Neighbour of the Beast" was slated as the sequel's title, but after Gaiman moved to the United States, Pratchett expressed doubt that a sequel would be written. Gaiman later affirmed this in one of his essays, titled "Terry Pratchett: An Appreciation". Pratchett died in 2015. In 2017, Gaiman revealed – as part of the filming of the television series based on the book – that he and Pratchett had done some plotting for the sequel, including that "[t]here would have been a lot of angels in the sequel", one of whom was Gabriel, who was only briefly mentioned in "Good Omens" but was to figure more prominently in the television series. When asked if Neil had any plans on releasing a sequel to "Good Omens" or maintaining its status as a standalone work, Gaiman stated that there was a plot for one that Pratchett wanted to be told, but that whether or not it would be made would depend on certain factors.


title: Good Omens

text: A film, to be directed by Terry Gilliam, was planned. As of 2002, Gilliam had still hoped to make the film with its already completed script, but by 2006, it seemed to have come to nothing. Funding was slow to appear, and Gilliam moved on to other projects. There was a rumour that Johnny Depp was originally cast as Crowley and Robin Williams as Aziraphale. However Gaiman has said on his website, "Well, Robin's worked with Terry Gilliam before as well, of course, most famously in "The Fisher King". But I have no idea about "Good Omens" casting (except for Shadwell. Terry told me who he wanted to play Shadwell. I immediately forgot the man's name, although I can assure you that it wasn't Robin Williams)." According to an interview in May 2006 at "The Guardian" Hay Festival, Gilliam was still hoping to go ahead with the film.


title: Good Omens

text: Gaiman confirmed in a 2013 podcast interview with "Empire" that the majority of the funding for the film was in place in 2002, but the project could not attract the initial funding to begin production.


title: Good Omens

text: Even in 2008, Gilliam was still hopeful about the project. Neil Gaiman's "Stardust" (based on his own novel of the same name) and "Beowulf" were successful as films in 2007, which had given the adaptation of "Good Omens" a better chance of being picked up. A Gilliam quote from an "Empire" interview appeared as follows: "And I thought with Neil, with "Stardust" and with "Beowulf" and there's another one – an animated film, a Henry Selick thing he's written "Coraline" – I was thinking he's really hot now, so maybe there's a chance. I mean it's such a wonderful book. And I think our script is pretty good, too. We did quite a few changes. We weren't as respectful as we ought to have been. But Neil's happy with it!"


title: Good Omens

text: The history of this project and similar experiences with Gaiman's various other works (including "The Sandman" series) have led to his cynical view of the Hollywood process, a view which occasionally surfaces in his weblog and in some of his short fiction. Pratchett shared a similar opinion, and was quoted as saying, "The difference between me and Neil in our attitude to movie projects is that he doesn't believe they're going to happen until he's sitting in his seat eating popcorn, and I don't believe they're going to happen."


title: Good Omens

text: Pratchett had had many of the same issues with Hollywood 'suits', but he, too, would have loved to have seen the film made.


title: Good Omens

text: In August 2012, Rhianna Pratchett announced an establishment of a new production company, Narrativia, with plans to produce, among other projects, a television film based on her father's book "Good Omens".


title: Good Omens

text: In February 2011, it was reported that a television adaptation may be produced, with Terry Jones and Gavin Scott "in talks" to write the series. On 19 March 2011, Gaiman announced on his website that a television series adaptation of his novel "is in the works from Terry Jones" with a link to Pratchett's webpage confirming the news.


title: Good Omens

text: In April 2016, Gaiman announced that he was writing the scripts for a six-part television series as the result of a request from Pratchett, made shortly before his death. In January 2017, further details emerged. Amazon.com announced that Gaiman would adapt "Good Omens" into a "comedic apocalyptic" miniseries, set to be released on Prime Video in 2019. The adaptation is a six-part limited comedy series for Amazon and the BBC, and Gaiman served as showrunner. On 14 August 2017, Michael Sheen and David Tennant were announced as having been cast in the respective lead roles of Aziraphale and Crowley. The village of Hambleden in Buckinghamshire is the filming location for 'Tadfield' with Jasmine Cottage being located just north of the village at Colstrope Farm. The adaptation was produced by BBC Studios in collaboration with Narrativia and Gaiman's The Blank Corporation. Distribution was handled by BBC Worldwide. All six episodes of the serial were released on 31 May 2019 on Amazon Prime.


title: Good Omens

text: In June 2021 Amazon renewed "Good Omens" for a second season, with Sheen and Tennant returning alongside most of the original crew.


title: Good Omens

text: On 5 September 2014, it was confirmed that the BBC would produce a radio adaptation of the novel, to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4, starting 22 December of that year. Mark Heap and Peter Serafinowicz led the cast, which also included Louise Brealey, Phil Davis, Mark Benton, Colin Morgan, Paterson Joseph, Josie Lawrence, Jim Norton, Adam Thomas Wright and Hollie Burgess. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett had cameo roles as a pair of traffic cops called "Neil" and "Terry". The series was broadcast in six episodes starting in December 2014.


title: Good Omens

text: In March 2013, Cult Classic Theatre in Glasgow, Scotland, performed Amy Hoff's adaptation of "Good Omens" with the permission of Pratchett and Gaiman.


title: Good Omens

text: In November 2017, Squabbalogic staged a special development reading of "Good Omens: The Musical" in Sydney, Australia with Nancye Hayes, Barry Quin and Paul Capsis.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Michael Julian Johnson (born June 4, 1986) is an American professional mixed martial artist. Johnson currently fights in the Lightweight division for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). A professional MMA competitor since 2008, Johnson mostly competed in his regional circuit, before signing onto the Ultimate Fighting Championship to appear on "", in which he was the runner-up.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on June 4, 1986. He was raised as the youngest of three siblings. Johnson began fighting at the age of 10, after his father's fatal heart attack. The incident made Johnson want to exert his anger physically. Johnson later said, "I lost something, a huge part of me...Fighting was my way of not dealing with my dad's passing. Now that I think of it, of course, it was the wrong thing to do, especially putting all that burden on my mom having to deal with it." Athletic, Johnson was a three-sport varsity athlete at Marquette High School in Chesterfield, Missouri. Johnson later received a full scholarship to play football at Central Methodist University, but transferred after one year to Meramec Community College, where he was one of the top NJCAA wrestlers in the country.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson is a former Midwest Fight League and Xtreme Cage Fighting Champion who won those titles in July 2008 and October 2009, respectively.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson's entry into the show was, in part, due to his persistence in attending tryouts for the show. After making the final interview round of "", Johnson was told that he wasn't the right fit for the show. Johnson then tried out for the ninth season of the show, before finally becoming accepted onto the twelfth season after telling the producers, "I've been getting tired of chasing you [expletive] around the country. I'm here; I'm not going to go anywhere. If you guys don't pick me, I'm going to try out again." Finally, Johnson was signed.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson's first fight took place on the debut episode of the season, where he faced unbeaten Pablo Garza. Johnson scored a unanimous decision victory, which moved him into the house.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: In the second episode, both St-Pierre and Koscheck had Johnson at the top of their lists when it came time to select fighters. During the team selection process, however, St-Pierre created a fake list that did not have Johnson among his top selections and subtly showed it to Koscheck to fool him into believing it. This seemed to manipulate Koscheck into picking Marc Stevens, as he may have believed he could take Johnson later. This allowed St-Pierre to choose Johnson with the second overall pick.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson competed in his preliminary round matchup against Aaron Wilkinson in the third episode. After some early striking exchanges in the first round, Wilkinson was able to take Johnson down and utilize ground-and-pound punches and elbows. In the second round, Johnson landed an early superman punch, as well as a takedown. After takedowns were achieved by both men, Johnson stuffed a final attempt and took the second round on the judges' scorecards. In the sudden victory round, Johnson attacked quickly, which allowed him to end the fight via a rear-naked choke.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: In episode 8, Team GSP had to pick which team members would fight each other (considering they had 5 members in the quarter-finals). St. Pierre asked each member to pick the fighter they wanted to fight. Johnson and Alex Caceres picked each other and a fight was scheduled. Johnson won by unanimous decision after two rounds, earning himself a spot in the semi-finals.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: In the final round, Johnson faced the one remaining Team Koscheck member, Nam Phan. In a back-and-forth fight, Johnson scored takedowns. The consensus after the fight was that Johnson won the opening round, and Phan the second. The third was in dispute, however, with each fighter's coach convinced they had won the round. Johnson was declared the winner via split decision.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson made his UFC debut in against Jonathan Brookins. That fight determined the winner of The Ultimate Fighter 12. After an impressive first round, Johnson lost rounds two and three — and subsequently the fight — via unanimous decision, leaving him the runner-up.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson was looking to take a fight outside of the UFC before returning to the promotion. The fight was to headline the North American Fighting Championship card against Jim Bleau. However, after obtaining a UFC fight, Johnson pulled out of the NAFC bout to focus his training on the UFC bout. Johnson faced Edward Faaloloto on June 26, 2011, at UFC on Versus 4 and won the fight via TKO in the first round.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson faced Paul Sass on October 1, 2011, at UFC on Versus 6. He lost the fight via submission in the first round.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson was expected to face Cody McKenzie on January 28, 2012, at UFC on Fox 2. However, McKenzie was forced out of the bout with an injury, and he was replaced by Shane Roller. Johnson defeated Roller by unanimous decision, with all three judges scoring the bout 29–28.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson faced Tony Ferguson on May 5, 2012, at UFC on Fox 3, replacing an injured Thiago Tavares. Johnson won the fight via unanimous decision.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson was expected to face Danny Castillo on September 1, 2012, at UFC 151. However, after UFC 151 was cancelled, Johnson/Castillo was rescheduled and took place on October 5, 2012, at UFC on FX 5. After almost being finished in the first round, Johnson survived and came back to win via KO at 1:06 into the second round. Johnson was awarded "Knockout of the Night" honors for his performance.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson fought Myles Jury on December 29, 2012, at UFC 155. He lost the fight via unanimous decision.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson faced Reza Madadi on April 6, 2013, at UFC on Fuel TV 9. Despite almost finishing Madadi with a head kick in the first round, Johnson eventually succumbed to the wrestling of Madadi and lost the fight via submission in the third round.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson faced Joe Lauzon on August 17, 2013, at UFC Fight Night 26. He won the fight via unanimous decision after outstriking Lauzon for all three rounds.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson faced Gleison Tibau on December 28, 2013, at UFC 168. He won the fight by knockout in the second round.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Due to an injury to Ross Pearson, Johnson stepped in to face Melvin Guillard at UFC Fight Night 37. Johnson won the fight via unanimous decision.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson was expected to face Josh Thomson on July 26, 2014, at UFC on Fox 12. However, on July 11, the UFC announced he had been pulled from the bout. It was later revealed that Johnson was pulled from the bout and would not compete during the remainder of 2014 his arrest in Palm Beach County, Florida in April 2014.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson faced Edson Barboza on February 22, 2015, at UFC Fight Night 61. He won the bout by unanimous decision.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: A bout with Benson Henderson was initially linked as the event headliner for on July 12, 2015. Although never officially announced by the UFC, the bout between Henderson and Johnson will not take place at this event.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson faced Beneil Dariush on August 8, 2015, at UFC Fight Night 73. He lost the fight via a controversial split decision. Every mainstream MMA media outlet polled by MMA Decisions scored the fight as decision victory for Johnson.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson faced Nate Diaz on December 19, 2015, at UFC on Fox 17. He lost the fight by unanimous decision. Both participants were awarded "Fight of the Night" honors.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: A rematch with Tony Ferguson was expected to take place on March 5, 2016, at UFC 196. However, on January 27, it was announced that Johnson withdrew from the bout due to an injury.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson faced Dustin Poirier on September 17, 2016, at UFC Fight Night 94. He won the fight via knockout early in the first round with a sharp two-punch combination followed by ground and pound. This win earned Johnson his first "Performance of the Night" bonus award.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson next faced Khabib Nurmagomedov on November 12, 2016, at UFC 205. He lost the fight via submission in the third round.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson faced former World Series of Fighting champion Justin Gaethje on July 7, 2017, in the main event at . Rocking Gaethje twice with punches, Johnson was not able to capitalize and lost the fight via TKO with a combination of punches and knees in the second round. The fight earned Johnson his second "Fight of the Night" bonus award.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson faced Darren Elkins in a featherweight bout on January 14, 2018, at . He lost the fight in round two via submission.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson faced Andre Fili on August 25, 2018, at UFC Fight Night 135. He won the fight via split decision.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson faced Artem Lobov on October 27, 2018, at UFC Fight Night 138. At weight-ins, Johnson weighed in at 147 pounds, one pounds over the featherweight limit of 146 pounds. As a result, the fight proceeded at a catchweight bout and Johnson was to forfeit 20% of his purse to Lobov, however Lobov refused to take the money. Johnson defeated Lobov by unanimous decision.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson faced Josh Emmett on March 30, 2019, at UFC on ESPN 2. Despite being up on the judges scorecards, Johnson lost the fight via knockout late in the third round.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson faced Stevie Ray at UFC on ESPN+ 20 on October 26, 2019. He lost the fight via majority decision.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson was scheduled to face Evan Dunham on April 25, 2020. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic event, Johnson was rescheduled to face Khama Worthy at UFC 249. In turn, the bout was postponed to a future date. However, the event was cancelled. However, on April 9, Dana White, the president of UFC announced that this event was postponed to a future date. Instead Johnson faced Thiago Moisés on May 13, 2020, at . After outstriking Moisés in the first round, he lost the fight via submission less than thirty seconds into the second round.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson faced Clay Guida on February 6, 2021, at UFC Fight Night 184. He lost the fight via unanimous decision.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson was scheduled to face Alan Patrick on May 7, 2022, at UFC 274. However, the bout was pushed back one week to for undisclosed reasons. Johnson won the fight via knockout in the second round, snapping his three year long losing streak and getting his first knockout victory since 2016 in the process.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson faced Jamie Mullarkey on July 9, 2022, at . He lost the fight via controversial split decision. 15 out of 19 media outlets scored the fight in favor of Johnson. The bout earned the "Fight of the Night" bonus award.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson faced Marc Diakiese on December 3, 2022, at UFC on ESPN 42. He won the bout via unanimous decision.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: Johnson trained at Springfield Fight Club, which is an affiliate of Gracie Barra based in Springfield, Missouri. Johnson also worked there as the assistant mixed martial arts coach.


title: Michael Johnson (fighter)

text: On April 9, 2014, Johnson was arrested in Palm Beach County, Florida following a domestic dispute. He was charged with misdemeanor domestic battery and later released on bail. The


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: The Left Hand of Darkness is a science fiction novel by U.S. writer Ursula K. Le Guin. Published in 1969, it became immensely popular, and established Le Guin's status as a major author of science fiction. The novel is set in the fictional Hainish universe as part of the "Hainish Cycle", a series of novels and short stories by Le Guin, which she introduced in the 1964 short story "The Dowry of Angyar". It was fourth in sequence of writing among the Hainish novels, preceded by "City of Illusions", and followed by "The Word for World Is Forest".


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: The novel follows the story of Genly Ai, a human native of Terra, who is sent to the planet of Gethen as an envoy of the Ekumen, a loose confederation of planets. Ai's mission is to persuade the nations of Gethen to join the Ekumen, but he is stymied by a lack of understanding of their culture. Individuals on Gethen are "ambisexual", with no fixed sex; this has a strong influence on the culture of the planet, and creates a barrier of understanding for Ai.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: "The Left Hand of Darkness" was among the first books in the genre now known as feminist science fiction and is the most famous examination of androgyny in science fiction. A major theme of the novel is the effect of sex and gender on culture and society, explored in particular through the relationship between Ai and Estraven, a Gethenian politician who trusts and helps Ai. When the book was first published, the gender theme touched off a feminist debate over the depiction of the ambisexual Gethenians. The novel also explores the interaction between the unfolding loyalties of its two main characters, the loneliness and rootlessness of Ai, and the contrast between the religions of Gethen's two major nations.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: "The Left Hand of Darkness" has been reprinted more than 30 times, and received high praise from reviewers. In 1970 it was voted the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel by fans and writers, respectively, and was ranked as the third best novel, behind Frank Herbert's "Dune" and Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End", in a 1975 poll in "Locus" magazine. In 1987, "Locus" ranked it second among science fiction novels, after "Dune", and literary critic Harold Bloom wrote, "Le Guin, more than Tolkien, has raised fantasy into high literature, for our time".


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: Le Guin's father Alfred Louis Kroeber was an anthropologist, and the experience that this gave Le Guin influenced all of her works. The protagonists of many of Le Guin's novels, such as "The Left Hand of Darkness" and "Rocannon's World", are also anthropologists or social investigators of some kind. Le Guin used the term "Ekumen" for her fictional alliance of worlds, a term coined by her father, who derived it from the Greek "oikoumene" to refer to Eurasian cultures that shared a common origin.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: Le Guin's interest in Taoism influenced much of her science fiction work. According to academic Douglas Barbour, the fiction of the Hainish universe (the setting for several of Le Guin's works) contain a theme of balance between light and darkness, a central theme of Taoism. She was also influenced by her early interest in mythology, and her exposure to cultural diversity as a child. Her protagonists are frequently interested in the cultures they are investigating, and are motivated to preserve them rather than conquer them. Authors who influenced Le Guin include Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, Italo Calvino, and Lao Tzu.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: Le Guin identified with feminism, and was interested in non-violence and ecological awareness. She participated in demonstrations against the Vietnam War and nuclear weapons. These sympathies can be seen in several of her works of fiction, including those in the Hainish universe. The novels of the Hainish cycle frequently explore the effects of differing social and political systems, although according to lecturer Suzanne Reid, Le Guin displayed a preference for a "society that governs by consensus, a communal cooperation without external government". Her fiction also frequently challenges accepted depictions of race and gender.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: The original 1969 edition of "The Left Hand of Darkness" did not contain an introduction. After reflecting on her work, Le Guin wrote in the 1976 edition that the genre of science fiction was not as "rationalist and simplistic" as simple extrapolation. Instead, she called it a "thought experiment" which presupposes some changes to the world, and probes their consequences. The purpose of the thought experiment is not to predict the future, but to "describe reality, the present world". In this case, her thought experiment explores a society without men or women, where individuals share the biological and emotional makeup of both sexes. Le Guin has also said that the genre in general allows exploration of the "real" world through metaphors and complex stories, and that science fiction can use imaginary situations to comment on human behaviors and relationships.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: "The Left Hand of Darkness" is set in the fictional Hainish universe, which Le Guin introduced in her first novel "Rocannon's World", published in 1966. In this fictional history, human beings did not evolve on Earth, but on Hain. The people of Hain colonized many neighboring planetary systems, including Terra (Earth) and Gethen, possibly a million years before the setting of the novels. Some of the groups that "seeded" each planet were the subjects of genetic experiments, including on Gethen. The planets subsequently lost contact with each other, for reasons that Le Guin does not explain. Le Guin does not narrate the entire history of the Hainish universe at once, instead letting readers piece it together from various works.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: The novels and other fictional works set in the Hainish universe recount the efforts to re-establish a galactic civilization. Explorers from Hain as well as other planets use interstellar ships traveling nearly as fast as light. These take years to travel between planetary systems, although the journey is shortened for the travelers due to relativistic time dilation, as well as through instantaneous interstellar communication using the ansible, a device invented during the events described in "The Dispossessed". This galactic civilization is known as the "League of All Worlds" in works set earlier in the chronology of the series, and has been reconstructed as the "Ekumen" by the time the events in "The Left Hand of Darkness" take place. During the events of the novel, the Ekumen is a union of 83 worlds, with some common laws. At least two "thought experiments" are used in each novel. The first is the idea that all humanoid species had a common origin; they are all depicted as descendants of the original Hainish colonizers. The second idea is unique to each novel.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: "The Left Hand of Darkness" takes place many centuries in the future—no date is given in the book itself. Reviewers have suggested the year 4870 AD, based on extrapolation of events in other works, and commentary on her writing by Le Guin. The protagonist of the novel, the envoy Genly Ai, is on a planet called Winter ("Gethen" in the language of its own people) to convince the citizens to join the Ekumen. Winter is, as its name indicates, a planet that is always cold.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: The inhabitants of Gethen are ambisexual humans; for twenty-four days (a period called "somer" in Karhidish, a Gethenian language) of each twenty-six-day lunar cycle, they are sexually latent androgynes. They only adopt sexual attributes once a month, during a period of sexual receptiveness and high fertility, called "kemmer". During "kemmer" they become sexually male or female, with no predisposition towards either, although which sex they adopt can depend on context and relationships. Throughout the novel Gethenians are described as "he", whatever their role in kemmer. This absence of fixed gender characteristics led Le Guin to portray Gethen as a society without war, and also without sexuality as a continuous factor in social relationships. On Gethen, every individual takes part in the "burden and privilege" of raising children, and rape and seduction are almost absent.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: The protagonist of the novel is Genly Ai, a male Terran native, who is sent to invite the planet Gethen to join the Ekumen, a coalition of humanoid worlds. Ai travels to the Gethen planetary system on a starship which remains in solar orbit with Ai's companions, who are in stasis; Ai himself is sent to Gethen alone, as the "first mobile" or Envoy. Like all envoys of the Ekumen, he can "mindspeak"—a form of quasi-telepathic speech, which Gethenians are capable of, but of which they are unaware. He lands in the Gethenian kingdom of Karhide, and spends two years attempting to persuade the members of its government of the value of joining the Ekumen. Karhide is one of two major nations on Gethen, the other being Orgoreyn.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: The novel begins the day before an audience that Ai has obtained with Argaven Harge, the king of Karhide. Ai manages this through the help of Estraven, the prime minister, who seems to believe in Ai's mission, but the night before the audience, Estraven tells Ai that he can no longer support Ai's cause with the king. Ai begins to doubt Estraven's loyalty because of his strange mannerisms, which Ai finds effeminate and ambiguous. The behavior of people in Karhide is dictated by "shifgrethor", an intricate set of unspoken social rules and formal courtesy. Ai does not understand this system, thus making it difficult for him to understand Estraven's motives, and contributing to his distrust of Estraven. The next day, as he prepares to meet the King, Ai learns that Estraven has been accused of treason, and exiled from the country. The pretext for Estraven's exile was his handling of a border dispute with the neighboring country of Orgoreyn, in which Estraven was seen as being too conciliatory. Ai meets with the king, who rejects his invitation to join the Ekumen. Discouraged, Ai decides to travel through Karhide, as the spring has just begun, rendering the interior of the frozen country accessible.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: Ai travels to a Fastness, a dwelling of people of the Handdarata, one of two major Gethenian religions. He pays the fastness for a foretelling, an art practiced to prove the "perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question". He asks if Gethen will be a member of the Ekumen in five years, expecting that the Foretellers will give him an ambiguous response, but he is answered "yes". This leads him to muse that the Gethenians have "trained hunch to run in harness". After several months of travelling through Karhide, Ai decides to pursue his mission in Orgoreyn, to which he has received an invitation.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: Ai reaches the Orgota capital of Mishnory, where he finds that the Orgota politicians are initially far more direct with him. He is given comfortable quarters, and is allowed to present his invitation to the council that rules Orgoreyn. Three members of the council, Shusgis, Obsle, and Yegey, are particularly supportive of him. These three are members of an "Open Trade" faction, which wants to end the conflict with Karhide. Estraven, who was banished from Karhide, is found working with these council members, and tells Ai that he was responsible for Ai's reception in Orgoreyn. Despite the support, Ai feels uneasy. Estraven warns him not to trust the Orgota leaders, and he hears rumors of the "Sarf", or secret police, that truly control Orgoreyn. He ignores both his feeling and the warning, and is once again blindsided; he is arrested unexpectedly one night, interrogated, and sent to a far-northern labor camp where he suffers harsh cold, is forced into hard labor, and is given debilitating drugs. He becomes ill and his death seems imminent.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: His captors expect him to die in the camp, but to Ai's great surprise, Estraven—whom Ai still distrusts—goes to great lengths to save him. Estraven poses as a prison guard and breaks Ai out of the farm, using his training with the Handdarata to induce "dothe", or hysterical strength, to aid him in the process. Estraven spends the last of his money on supplies, and then steals more, breaking his own moral code. The pair begin a dangerous 80-day trek across the northern Gobrin ice sheet back to Karhide, because Estraven believes that the reappearance of Ai in Karhide will convince Karhide to accept the Ekumen treaty, knowing that Karhide will want the honor of doing so before Orgoreyn. Over the journey Ai and Estraven learn to trust and accept one another's differences. Ai is eventually successful in teaching Estraven mindspeech; Estraven hears Ai speaking in his mind with the voice of Estraven's dead sibling and lover Arek, demonstrating the close connection that Ai and Estraven have developed. When they reach Karhide, Ai sends a radio transmission to his ship, which lands a few days later. Estraven tries to cross the land border with Orgoreyn, because he is still exiled from Karhide, but is killed by border guards, who capture Ai. Estraven's prediction is borne out when Ai's presence in Karhide triggers the collapse of governments in both Karhide and Orgoreyn—Orgoreyn's because its claim that Ai had died of a disease was shown to be false. Karhide agrees to join the Ekumen, followed shortly by Orgoreyn, completing Ai's mission.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: Genly Ai is the protagonist of the novel; a male native of Terra, or Earth, who is sent to Gethen by the Ekumen as a "first mobile" or envoy. He is called "Genry" by the Karhiders, who have trouble pronouncing the sound [l]. He is described as rather taller and darker than the average Gethenian. Although curious and sensitive to Gethenian culture in many ways, he struggles at first to trust the ambisexual Gethenians. His own masculine mannerisms, learned on Terra, also prove to be a barrier to communication. At the beginning of the book, he has been on Gethen for one year, trying to gain an audience with the king, and persuade the Karhidish government to believe his story. He arrives equipped with basic information about the language and culture from a team of investigators who had come before him.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: In Karhide, the king is reluctant to accept his diplomatic mission. In Orgoreyn, Ai is seemingly accepted more easily by the political leaders, yet Ai is arrested, stripped of his clothes, drugged, and sent to a work camp. Rescued by Estraven, the deposed Prime Minister of Karhide, Genly realizes that cultural differences—specifically "shifgrethor", gender roles and Gethenian sexuality—had kept him from understanding their relationship previously. During their 80-day journey across the frozen land to return to Karhide, Ai learns to understand and love Estraven.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: Therem Harth rem ir Estraven is a Gethenian from the Domain of Estre in Kerm Land, at the southern end of the Karhidish half of the continent. He is the Prime Minister of Karhide at the very beginning of the novel, until he is exiled from Karhide after attempting to settle the Sinoth Valley border dispute with Orgoreyn. Estraven is one of the few Gethenians who believe Ai, and he attempts to help him from the beginning, but Ai's inability to comprehend "shifgrethor" leads to severe misunderstanding between them.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: Estraven is said to have made a taboo kemmering vow (love pledge) to his brother, Arek Harth rem ir Estraven, while they were both young. Convention required that they separate after they had produced a child together. Because of the first vow, a second vow Estraven made with Ashe Foreth, another partner, which was also broken before the events in "Left Hand", is called a "false vow, a second vow". In contrast to Ai, Estraven is shown with both stereotypically masculine and feminine qualities, and is used to demonstrate that both are necessary for survival.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: Argaven Harge XV is the king of Karhide during the events of the novel. He is described both by his subjects and by Estraven as being "mad". He has sired seven children, but has yet to bear "an heir of the body, king son". During the novel he becomes pregnant but loses the child soon after it is born, triggering speculation as to which of his sired children will be named his heir. His behavior towards Ai is consistently paranoid; although he grants Ai an audience, he refuses to believe his story, and declines the offer to join the Ekumen. The tenure of his prime ministers tends to be short, with both Estraven and Tibe rising and falling from power during the two Gethenian years that the novel spans. Argaven eventually agrees to join the Ekumen due to the political fallout of Estraven's death and Ai's escape from Orgoreyn.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: Pemmer Harge rem ir Tibe is Argaven Harge's cousin. Tibe becomes the prime minister of Karhide when Estraven is exiled at the beginning of the novel, and becomes the regent for a brief while when Argaven is pregnant. In contrast to Estraven, he seems intent on starting a war with Orgoreyn over the Sinnoth Valley dispute; as well as taking aggressive actions at the border, he regularly makes belligerent speeches on the radio. He is strongly opposed to Ai's mission. He orders Estraven to be killed at the border at the end of the novel, as a last act of defiance, knowing that Estraven and Ai's presence in Karhide means his own downfall; he resigns immediately after Estraven's death.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: Obsle, Yegey, and Shusgis are Commensals, three of the thirty-three councillors that rule Orgoreyn. Obsle and Yegey are members of the "Open Trade" faction, who wish to normalize relations with Karhide. Obsle is the commensal of the Sekeve District, and was once the head of the Orgota Naval Trade Commission in Erhenrang, where he became acquainted with Estraven. Estraven describes him as the nearest thing to an honest person among the politicians of Orgoreyn. Yegey is the commensal who first finds Estraven during his exile, and who gives Estraven a job and a place to live in Mishnory. Shusgis is the commensal who hosts Genly Ai after Ai's arrival in Mishnory, and is a member of the opposing faction, which supports the Sarf, the Orgota secret police. Although Obsle and Yegey support Ai's mission, they see him more as a means of increasing their own influence within the council; thus they eventually betray him to the Sarf, in order to save themselves. Their Open Trade faction takes control of the council after Ai's presence in Karhide becomes known at the end of the novel.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: "The Left Hand of Darkness" has received highly positive critical responses since its publication. In 1970 it won both the Nebula Award, given by the Science Fiction Writers of America, and the Hugo Award, determined by science fiction fans. In 1987, science fiction news and trade journal "Locus" ranked it number two among "All-Time Best SF Novels", based on a poll of subscribers. The novel was also a personal milestone for Le Guin, with critics calling it her "first contribution to feminism". It was one of her most popular books for many years after its publication. By 2014, the novel had sold more than a million copies in English.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: The book has been widely praised by genre commentators, academic critics, and literary reviewers. Fellow science fiction writer Algis Budrys praised the novel as "a narrative so fully realized, so compellingly told, so masterfully executed". He found the book "a novel written by a magnificent writer, a totally compelling tale of human peril and striving under circumstances in which human love, and a number of other human qualities, can be depicted in a fresh context". Darko Suvin, one of the first academics to study science fiction, wrote that "Left Hand" was the "most memorable novel of the year", and Charlotte Spivack regards the book as having established Le Guin's status as a major science-fiction writer. In 1987 Harold Bloom described "The Left Hand of Darkness" as Le Guin's "finest work to date", and argued that critics have generally undervalued it. Bloom followed this up by listing the book in his "The Western Canon" (1994) as one of the books in his conception of artistic works that have been important and influential in Western culture. In Bloom's opinion, "Le Guin, more than Tolkien, has raised fantasy into high literature, for our time".


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: Critics have also commented on the broad influence of the book, with writers such as Budrys citing it as an influence upon their own writing. More generally it has been asserted that the work has been widely influential in the science fiction field, with "The Paris Review" claiming that "No single work did more to upend the genre's conventions than "The Left Hand of Darkness"". Donna White, in her study of the critical literature on Le Guin, argued that "Left Hand" was one of the seminal works of science fiction, as important as "Frankenstein", by Mary Shelley, which is often described as the very first science fiction novel. Suzanne Reid wrote that at the time the novel was written, Le Guin's ideas of androgyny were unique not only to science fiction, but to literature in general.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: "Left Hand" has been a focus of literary critique of Le Guin's work, along with her Earthsea fiction and utopian fiction. The novel was at the center of a feminist debate when it was published in 1969. Alexei Panshin objected to the use of masculine "he/him/his" gender pronouns to describe its androgynous characters, and called the novel a "flat failure". Other feminists maintained that the novel did not go far enough in its exploration of gender. Criticism was also directed at the portrayal of androgynous characters in the "masculine" roles of politicians and statesmen but not in family roles. Sarah LeFanu, for example, wrote that Le Guin turned her back on an opportunity for experimentation. She stated that "these male heroes with their crises of identity, caught in the stranglehold of liberal individualism, act as a dead weight at the center of the novel". Le Guin, who identifies as a feminist, responded to these criticisms in her essay "Is Gender Necessary?" as well as by switching masculine pronouns for feminine ones in a later reprinting of "Winter's King", an unconnected short story set on Gethen. In her responses, Le Guin admitted to failing to depict androgynes in stereotypically feminine roles, but said that she considered and decided against inventing gender-neutral pronouns, because they would mangle the language of the novel. In the afterword of the 25th anniversary edition of the novel, she stated that her opinion on the matter had changed, and that she was "haunted and bedeviled by the matter of the pronouns."


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: Le Guin's works set in the Hainish universe explore the idea of human expansion, a theme found in the future history novels of other science-fiction authors such as Isaac Asimov. The Hainish novels, such as "The Dispossessed", "Left Hand", and "The Word for World Is Forest," also frequently explore the effects of differing social and political systems. Le Guin believed that contemporary society suffered from a high degree of alienation and division, and her depictions of encounters between races, such as in "The Left Hand of Darkness," sought to explore the possibility of "improved mode of human relationships", based on "integration and integrity". "The Left Hand of Darkness" explores this theme through the relationship between Genly Ai and Estraven; Ai initially distrusts Estraven, but eventually comes to love and trust him. Le Guin's later Hainish novels also challenge contemporary ideas about gender, ethnic differences, the value of ownership, and human beings' relationship to the natural world.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: A prominent theme in the novel is social relations in a society in which gender is irrelevant; in Le Guin's words, she "eliminated gender, to find out what was left". In her 1976 essay "Is Gender Necessary?" Le Guin wrote that the theme of gender was only secondary to the novel's primary theme of loyalty and betrayal. Le Guin revisited this essay in 1988, and stated that gender was central to the novel; her earlier essay had described gender as a peripheral theme because of the defensiveness she felt over using masculine pronouns for her characters.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: The novel also follows changes in the character of Genly Ai, whose behavior shifts away from the "masculine" and grows more androgynous over the course of the novel. He becomes more patient and caring, and less rigidly rationalist. Ai struggles to form a bond with Estraven through much of the novel, and finally breaks down the barrier between them during their journey on the ice, when he recognizes and accepts Estraven's dual sexuality. Their understanding of each other's sexuality helps them achieve a more trusting relationship. The new intimacy they share is shown when Ai teaches Estraven to mindspeak, and Estraven hears Ai speaking with the voice of Estraven's dead sibling (and lover) Arek.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: Feminist theorists criticized the novel for what they saw as a homophobic depiction of the relationship between Estraven and Ai. Both are presented as superficially masculine throughout the novel, but they never physically explore the attraction between them. Estraven's death at the end was seen as giving the message that "death is the price that must be paid for forbidden love". In a 1986 essay, Le Guin acknowledged and apologized for the fact that "Left Hand" had presented heterosexuality as the norm on Gethen.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: The androgynous nature of the inhabitants of Gethen is used to examine gender relations in human society. On Gethen, the permanently male Genly Ai is an oddity, and is seen as a "pervert" by the natives; according to reviewers, this is Le Guin's way of gently critiquing masculinity. Le Guin also seems to suggest that the absence of gender divisions leads to a society without the constriction of gender roles. The Gethenians are not inclined to go to war, which reviewers have linked to their lack of sexual aggressiveness, derived from their ambisexuality. According to Harold Bloom, "Androgyny is clearly neither a political nor a sexual ideal" in the book, but that "ambisexuality is a more imaginative condition than our bisexuality. ... the Gethenians "know" more than either men or women". Bloom added that this is the major difference between Estraven and Ai, and allows Estraven the freedom to carry out actions that Ai cannot; Estraven "is better able to love, and freed therefore to sacrifice".


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: The book features two major religions: the Handdara, an informal system reminiscent of Taoism and Buddhism, and the Yomeshta or Meshe's cult, a close-to-monotheistic religion based on the idea of absolute knowledge of the entirety of time attained in one visionary instant by Meshe, who was originally a Foreteller of the Handdara, when attempting to answer the question: "What is the meaning of life?" The Handdara is the more ancient, and dominant in Karhide, while Yomesh is the official religion in Orgoreyn. The differences between them underlie political distinctions between the countries and cultural distinctions between their inhabitants. Estraven is revealed to be an adept of the Handdara.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: Le Guin's interest in Taoism influenced much of her science fiction work. Douglas Barbour said that the fiction of the Hainish Universe contains a theme of balance between light and darkness, a central theme of Taoism. The title "The Left Hand of Darkness" derives from the first line of a lay traditional to the fictional planet of Gethen:


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: Suzanne Reid stated that this presentation of light and dark was in strong contrast to many western cultural assumptions, which believe in strongly contrasted opposites. She went on to say that Le Guin's characters have a tendency to adapt to the rhythms of nature rather than trying to conquer them, an attitude which can also be traced to Taoism. The Handdarrata represent the Taoist sense of unity; believers try to find insight by reaching the "untrance", a balance between knowing and unknowing, and focusing and unfocusing.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: The Yomesh cult is the official religion of Orgoreyn, and worships light. Critics such as David Lake have found parallels between the Yomesh cult and Christianity, such as the presence of saints and angels, and the use of a dating system based on the death of the prophet. Le Guin portrays the Yomesh religion as influencing the Orgota society, which Lake interprets as a critique of the influence of Christianity upon Western society. In comparison to the religion of Karhide, the Yomesh religion focuses more on enlightenment and positive, obvious statements. The novel suggests that this focus on positives leads to the Orgota being not entirely honest, and that a balance between enlightenment and darkness is necessary for truth.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: Loyalty, fidelity, and betrayal are significant themes in the book, explored against the background of both planetary and interplanetary relations. Genly Ai is sent to Gethen as an envoy of the Ekumen, whose mission is to convince the various Gethenian nations that their identities will not be destroyed when they integrate with the Ekumen. At the same time, the planetary conflict between Karhide and Orgoreyn is shown as increasing nationalism, making it hard for citizens of each country to view themselves as citizens of the planet.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: These conflicts are demonstrated by the varying loyalties of the main characters. Genly Ai tells Argaven after Estraven's death that Estraven served mankind as a whole, just as Ai did. During the border dispute with Orgoreyn, Estraven tries to end the dispute by moving Karhidish farmers out of the disputed territory. Estraven believes that by preventing war he was saving Karhidish lives and being loyal to his country, while King Argaven sees it as a betrayal. At the end of the novel Ai calls his ship down to formalize Gethen's joining the Ekumen, and feels conflicted while doing so because he had promised Estraven that he would clear Estraven's name before calling his ship down. His decision is an example of Le Guin's portrayal of loyalty and betrayal as complementary rather than contradictory, because in joining Gethen with the Ekumen, Ai was fulfilling the larger purpose that he shared with Estraven. Donna White wrote that many of Le Guin's novels depict a struggle between personal loyalties and public duties, best exemplified in "The Left Hand of Darkness", where Ai is bound by a personal bond to Estraven, but must subordinate that to his mission for the Ekumen and humanity.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: The theme of loyalty and trust is related to the novel's other major theme of gender. Ai has considerable difficulty in completing his mission because of his prejudice against the ambisexual Gethenians and his inability to establish a personal bond with them. Ai's preconceived ideas of how men should behave prevents him from trusting Estraven when the two meet; Ai labels Estraven "womanly" and distrusts him because Estraven exhibits both male and female characteristics. Estraven also faces difficulties communicating with Ai, who does not understand "shifgrethor", the Gethenians' indirect way of giving and receiving advice. A related theme that runs through Le Guin's work is that of being rooted or rootless in society, explored through the experiences of lone individuals on alien planets.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: "Shifgrethor" is a fictional concept in the Hainish universe, first introduced in "The Left Hand of Darkness". It is first mentioned by Genly Ai, when he thinks to himself "shifgrethor—prestige, face, place, the pride-relationship, the untranslatable and all-important principle of social authority in Karhide and all civilizations of Gethen". It derives from an old Gethenian word for shadow, as prominent people are said to "cast darker [or longer] shadows". George Slusser describes "shifgrethor" as "not rank, but its opposite, the ability to maintain equality in any relationship, and to do so by respecting the person of the other". According to University of West Georgia Professor Carrie B. McWhorter, "shifgrethor" can be defined simply as "a sense of honor and respect that provides the Gethenians with a way to save face in a time of crisis".


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: Ai initially refuses to see a connection between his sexuality and his mode of consciousness, preventing him from truly understanding the Gethenians; thus he is unable to persuade them of the importance of his mission. Ai's failure to comprehend "shifgrethor" and to trust Estraven's motives leads him to misunderstand much of the advice that Estraven gives him. As Ai's relationship to Estraven changes, their communication also changes; they are both more willing to acknowledge mistakes, and make fewer assertions. Eventually, the two are able to converse directly with mindspeech, but only after Ai is able to understand Estraven's motivations, and no longer requires direct communication.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: The novel is framed as part of the report that Ai sends back to the Ekumen after his time on Gethen, and as such, suggests that Ai is selecting and ordering the material. Ai narrates ten chapters in the first person; the rest are made up of extracts from Estraven's personal diary and ethnological reports from an earlier observer from the Ekumen, interspersed with Gethenian myths and legends. The novel begins with the following statement from Ai, explaining the need for multiple voices in the novel:


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: The myths and legends serve to explain specific features about Gethenian culture, as well as larger philosophical aspects of society. Many of the tales used in the novel immediately precede chapters describing Ai's experience with a similar situation. For instance, a story about the dangers of foretelling is presented before Ai's own experience witnessing a foretelling. Other stories include a retelling of the legend of the "place inside the storm" (about two lovers whose vow is broken when societal strictures cause one to kill themself); another retelling the roots of the Yomeshta cult; a third is an ancient Orgota creation myth; a fourth is a story of one of Estraven's ancestors, which discusses what a traitor is. The presence of myths and legends has also been cited by reviewers who state that Le Guin's work, particularly "Left Hand", is similar to allegory in many ways. These include the presence of a guide (Estraven) for the protagonist (Ai), and the use of myths and legends to provide a backdrop for the story.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: The heterogeneous structure of the novel has been described as "distinctly post-modern", and was unusual for the time of its publication, in marked contrast to (primarily male-authored) traditional science fiction, which was straightforward and linear. In 1999, literary scholar Donna White wrote that the unorthodox structure of the novel made it initially confusing to reviewers, before it was interpreted as an attempt to follow the trajectory of Ai's changing views. Also in contrast to what was typical for male authors of the period, Le Guin narrated the action in the novel through the personal relationships she depicted.


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: Ai's first-person narration reflects his slowly developing view, and the reader's knowledge and understanding of the Gethens evolves with Ai's awareness. He begins in naivety, gradually discovering his profound errors in judgement. In this sense, the novel can be thought of as a "Bildungsroman", or coming of age story. Since the novel is presented as Ai's journey of transformation, Ai's position as the narrator increases the credibility of the story. The narration is complemented by Le Guin's writing style, described by Bloom as "precise, dialectical—always evocative in its restrained pathos" which is "exquisitely fitted to her powers of invention".


title: The Left Hand of Darkness

text: In December 2004, Phobos Entertainment acquired media rights to the novel and announced plans for a feature film and video game based on it. In 2013, the Portland Playhouse and Hand2Mouth Theatre produced a stage adaptation of "The Left Hand of Darkness" in Portland, Oregon. On April 12 and 19, 2015, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a two-part adaptation of the novel, starring Kobna Holdbrook-Smith as Genly Ai, Lesley Sharp as Estraven, Toby Jones as Argaven, Ruth Gemmell as Ashe, Louise Brealey as Tibe and Gaum, Stephen Critchlow as Shusgis, and David Acton as Obsle. The radio drama was adapted by Judith Adams and directed by Allegra McIlroy. The adaptation was created and aired as part of a thematic month centered on the life and works of Ursula Le Guin, in honor of her 85th birthday. In early 2017, the novel was picked up for production by Critical Content as a television limited series with Le Guin serving as a consulting producer. The first university production of "Left Hand of Darkness" premiered in the University of Oregon's Robinson Theater on November 3, 2017, with a script adapted by John Schmor. Many works of the transgender artist Tuesday Smillie exhibited at the Rose Art Museum take inspiration from the book.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: Mount Pinatubo is an active stratovolcano in the Zambales Mountains, located on the tripoint boundary of the Philippine provinces of Zambales, Tarlac and Pampanga, all in Central Luzon on the northern island of Luzon. Its eruptive history was unknown to most before the pre-eruption volcanic activity of early 1991. Pinatubo was heavily eroded and obscured from view by dense forests which supported a population of several thousand indigenous Aetas.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: Pinatubo is most notorious for its VEI-6 eruption on June 15, 1991, the second-largest terrestrial eruption of the 20th century after the 1912 eruption of Novarupta in Alaska.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: Complicating the eruption was the arrival of Typhoon Yunya, bringing a lethal mix of ash and rain to towns and cities surrounding the volcano. Predictions at the onset of the climactic eruption led to the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from the surrounding areas, saving many lives. Surrounding areas were severely damaged by pyroclastic surges, pyroclastic falls, and subsequently, by the flooding lahars caused by rainwater re-mobilizing earlier volcanic deposits. This caused extensive destruction to infrastructure and changed river systems for years after the eruption. Minor dome-forming eruptions inside the caldera continued from 1992 to 1993.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: The effects of the 1991 eruption were felt worldwide. It erupted roughly or of magma, and of , bringing vast quantities of minerals and toxic metals to the surface environment. It ejected more particulate into the stratosphere than any eruption since Krakatoa in 1883. Over the following months, the aerosols formed a global layer of sulfuric acid haze. Global temperatures dropped by about in the years 1991–1993, and ozone depletion temporarily saw a substantial increase.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: The volcano is about northwest of Manila, the capital of the Philippines. Near Mount Pinatubo are former military bases that were maintained by the United States. The U.S. Naval Base Subic Bay was south of Pinatubo, and the extent of Clark Air Base was just east of the volcano's summit. The volcano is near to about 6 million people.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: Mount Pinatubo's summit before the 1991 eruption was above sea level, only about above nearby plains, and only about higher than surrounding peaks, which largely obscured it from view. It is part of a chain of volcanoes which lie along the western side of the island of Luzon called the Zambales Mountains.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: Pinatubo belongs to the Cabusilan sub-range of the Zambales Mountains, which consists of Mount Cuadrado, Mount Negron, Mount Mataba and Mount Pinatubo. They are subduction volcanoes, formed by the Eurasian Plate sliding under the Philippine Mobile Belt along the Manila Trench to the west. Mount Pinatubo and the other volcanoes on this volcanic belt arise due to magmatic occlusion from this subduction plate boundary.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: Pinatubo is flanked on the west by the Zambales Ophiolite Complex, which is an easterly-dipping section of Eocene oceanic crust uplifted during the late Oligocene. The Tarlac Formation north, east and southeast of Pinatubo consists of marine, nonmarine and volcanoclastic sediments formed in the late Miocene and Pliocene.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: The most recent study of Mount Pinatubo before the activities of 1991 was the overall geological study in 1983 and 1984 made by F. G. Delfin for the Philippine National Oil Company as part of the surface investigations of the area before exploratory drilling and well testing for geothermal energy sources in 1988 to 1990. He recognized two life histories of the mountain, which he classified as "ancestral" and "modern" Pinatubo.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: Activity of Ancestral Pinatubo seems to have begun about 1.1 million years ago and probably ended tens of thousands of years or more before the birth of "modern" Pinatubo. Much of the rugged land around the present volcano consists of remnants of "ancestral" Pinatubo. It was an andesite and dacite stratovolcano whose eruptive activity was much less explosive than modern Pinatubo. Its center was roughly where the current volcano is. The projected height of the mountain is up to , or 1.43 miles above sea level if it were a lone peak, based on a profile fitting to the remaining lower slopes, or lower if it had more than one peak.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: The old volcano is exposed in the walls of an old wide caldera, referred to as "Tayawan Caldera" by Delfin. Some of the nearby peaks are the remnants of ancestral Pinatubo, left behind when the softer parts of the old mountain slopes were eroded by weathering. Ancestral Pinatubo is a somma volcano with modern Pinatubo as the new cone.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: Mount Dorst, to the east, is part of the dip slope of the ancestral Pinatubo. Several mountains near modern Pinatubo are old satellite vents of ancestral Pinatubo, forming volcanic plugs and lava domes. These satellite vents were probably active around the same time as the ancestral volcano and include the domes of Mount Negron, Mount Cuadrado, Mount Mataba and the Bituin and Tapungho plugs.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: Later eruptions of modern Pinatubo occurred episodically and lasted for periods much shorter than the repose intervals between them. Subsequent eruptions and eruptive period occurred about:


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: Each of these eruptions seems to have been very large, ejecting more than of material and covering large parts of the surrounding areas with pyroclastic flow deposits. Some eruptive periods have lasted decades and perhaps as much as several centuries and might appear to include multiple large explosive eruptions.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: The maximum size of eruptions in each eruptive period though has been getting smaller through the more than 35,000-year history of modern Pinatubo, but this might be an artifact of erosion and burial of older deposits. The oldest eruption of modern Pinatubo, Inararo, was also its largest.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: The volcano has never grown very large between eruptions, because it produces mostly unwelded, easily erodible deposits and periodically destroys the viscous domes that fill its vents. After the Buag eruption (c. 1500 AD), the volcano lay dormant, its slopes becoming completely covered in dense rainforest and eroded into gullies and ravines. The c. 500-year repose though between the Buag and present eruptive periods is among the shorter repose periods recognized in its geologic history.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: A small blast at 03:41 PST on June 12 marked the beginning of a new, more violent phase of the eruption. A few hours later the same day, massive blasts lasting about half an hour generated big eruption columns, which quickly reached heights of over and which generated large pyroclastic surges extending up to from the summit in some river valleys. Fourteen hours later, a 15-minute blast hurled volcanic matter to heights of . Friction in the up-rushing ash column generated abundant volcanic lightning.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: In March and April 1991, magma rising toward the surface from more than beneath Pinatubo triggered small volcano tectonic earthquakes and caused powerful steam explosions that blasted three craters on the north flank of the volcano. Thousands of small earthquakes occurred beneath Pinatubo through April, May and early June and many thousand of tons of noxious sulfur dioxide gas were also emitted by the volcano.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: From June 7 to 12, the first magma reached the surface of Mount Pinatubo. Because it had lost most of the gas contained in it on the way to the surface, the magma oozed out to form a lava dome but did not cause an explosive eruption. However, on June 12, millions of cubic yards of gas-charged magma reached the surface and exploded in the reawakening volcano's first spectacular eruption.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: When even more highly gas-charged magma reached Pinatubo's surface on June 15, the volcano exploded in a cataclysmic eruption that ejected more than of material. The ash cloud from this climactic eruption rose into the atmosphere. At lower altitudes, the volcanic ash was blown in all directions by the intense cyclonic winds of a coincidentally occurring typhoon, and winds at higher altitudes blew the ash southwestward. A blanket of ash and larger pumice lapilli blanketed the countryside. Fine ash fell as far away as the Indian Ocean and satellites tracked the ash cloud several times around the globe.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: Huge pyroclastic flows roared down the flanks of Mount Pinatubo, filling once-deep valleys with fresh volcanic deposits as much as thick. The eruption removed so much magma and rock from below the volcano that the summit collapsed to form a wide caldera.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: Following the climactic eruption of June 15, 1991, activity at the volcano continued at a much lower level, with continuous ash eruptions lasting until August 1991 and episodic eruptions continuing for another month.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: Activity at the volcano remained low until July 1992 when a new lava dome started growing in the caldera. Volcanologists suspected that further violent eruptions could be possible, and some areas were evacuated. However, the eruption was only minor. The last eruption of Mount Pinatubo took place in 1993.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: The 1991 caldera afterwards filled with water from annual monsoon rains and a crater lake, Lake Pinatubo, was formed. In 1992, a growing lava dome formed an island, which was eventually submerged by the lake. Initially, the lake was hot and highly acidic, with a minimum pH of 2 and a temperature of about . Subsequent rainfall cooled and diluted the lake, lowering the temperature to and raising the pH to 5.5 by 2003.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: The lake deepened by about per month on average, eventually submerging the lava dome, until September 2001, when fears that the walls of the crater might be unstable prompted the Philippine government to order a controlled draining of the lake. An estimated 9,000 people were once again evacuated from surrounding areas in case a large flood was accidentally triggered. Workers cut a notch in the crater rim and drained about a quarter of the lake's volume.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: On July 10, 2002, the west wall of the crater collapsed, slowly releasing approximately of water and sediments into the Maraunot River in Botolan, Zambales.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: On July 26, 2011, a 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck close to Pinatubo; however, no major damages or casualties were reported.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: On March 4, 2021, the PHIVOLCS raised alert level 1 over Mount Pinatubo after reporting an increase on its seismic activity. 1,722 volcanic earthquakes were also recorded within the vicinity of the volcano since January 2021.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: On August 11, 2021, PHIVOLCS downgraded Mt. Pinatubo's Alert Level 1 to Level 0, due to "continued decrease in earthquake activity and a return to baseline seismic parameters".


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: PHIVOLCS said it noted a "significant decrease" in volcanic earthquakes, with a total of 104 quakes or an average 2 - 3 events per day recorded from July 1 - August 1, 2021.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: On November 30, 2021, PHIVOLCS reported a weak explosion occurred on Mt. Pinatubo between 12:09 p.m. and 12:13 p.m., which produced a plume. The agency later confirmed it was a phreatic explosion produced by hydrothermal fluids near the surface, rather than a magmatic eruption.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: The word "pinatubo" could mean "fertile place where one can make crops grow", or could mean "made to grow", in Sambal and Tagalog, which may suggest a knowledge of its previous eruption in about 1500 AD. There is a local oral tradition suggestive of a folk memory of earlier large eruptions. An ancient legend tells of Bacobaco, a terrible spirit of the sea, who could metamorphose into a huge turtle and throw fire from his mouth. In the legend, when being chased by the spirit hunters, Bacobaco flees to the mountain and digs a great hole in its summit showering the surrounding land with rock, mud, dust and fire for three days; howling so loudly that the earth shakes.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: Aeta elders tell many stories about the history of the mountain, the best known being that it was once a Batung Mabye (Kapampangan language for "living stone"). It was said to have been planted on a kingdom by a displeased sorcerer but relocated by a hero. The mountain was soon turned into the abode of Apo Namalyari ("The lord of happenings/events"), the pagan deity of the Sambal, Aetas and Kapampangans living on the Zambales range.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: It was said to comprise the whole mountain range until Sinukuan of Mount Arayat (the god of the Kapampangans) became a strong rival of Namalyari. Their fight, which took place over the center plains, shattered the mountain into smaller bodies and Mount Arayat lost its center peak. Other versions have it that Pinatubo's peak shattered because of Namalyari's immense fury in an attempt to teach humans the meaning of fear and show how misdeeds will be punished.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: According to the native elders, Apo Namalyari induced the June 1991 eruption because of displeasure toward illegal loggers and Philippine National Oil Company executives who performed deep exploratory drilling and well testing on the volcano looking for geothermal heat from 1988 to 1990. Discouraging results from the wells forced the abandonment of the prospect 13 months before the April 2, 1991 explosions.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: After being driven away by the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, in May 2009 some 454 Aeta families in Pampanga were given the first clean ancestral land ownership on Mount Pinatubo with the Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), the government agency that deals with issues concerning indigenous people of the Philippines. The approved and declared net land area of covers the barangays of Mawakat and Nabuklod in Floridablanca, Pampanga, plus a portion of San Marcelino, Zambales, and a portion of Barangay Batiawan in Subic, Zambales.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: On January 14, 2010, some 7,000 Aeta families from Zambales were officially granted the Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) covering the Zambales side of Pinatubo which includes the summit and Lake Pinatubo, officially becoming their "lutan tua" (ancestral land). The ancestral domain title covers and includes the villages of Burgos, Villar, Moraza and Belbel in Botolan and portions of the towns of Cabangan, San Felipe and San Marcelino.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: Having the land title will protect them from others – including foreigners – exploiting their land without compensation and consent to the indigenous tribes. In the past, the Aetas had to contend with mining companies, loggers, and recently, tourist companies who earn from Mount Pinatubo but do not compensate the local tribes.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: Ancestral domain titles are awarded to a certain community or indigenous group who have occupied or possessed the land continuously in accordance with their customs and traditions since time immemorial. They have the legal right to collectively possess and to enjoy the land and its natural resources to the exclusion of others.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: Long before Mount Pinatubo became famous for its cataclysmic eruption, Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay, a native of Zambales, named his C-47 presidential plane "Mt. Pinatubo". The plane crashed into Mount Manunggal in Cebu province in 1957, killing the President and twenty-four others on board.


title: Mount Pinatubo

text: The caldera formed and Lake Pinatubo has, since June 15, 1991, become a tourist attraction with the preferred route through Barangay Santa Juliana in Capas, Tarlac.


title: George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood

text: George Henry Hubert Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood, (7 February 1923 – 11 July 2011), styled The Honourable George Lascelles before 1929 and Viscount Lascelles between 1929 and 1947, was a British classical music administrator and author. He served as director of the Royal Opera House (1951–53; 1969–72), chairman of the board of the English National Opera (ENO) (1986–95); managing director of the ENO (1972–85), managing director of the English National Opera North (1978–81), governor of the BBC (1985–87), and president of the British Board of Film Classification (1985–96).