Literature questions

Carpe diem is a Latin aphorism, usually translated "seize the day", taken from book 1 of the Roman poet Horace's work Odes (23 BC).

The term is today used for handbooks, but a “vademecum” may be any helpful thing one carries around.

Raft is a 1991 hard science fiction book by British writer Stephen Baxter. Raft is both Baxter's debut novel and the first book in the Xeelee Sequence, although the Xeelee are not present. Raft was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1992.

Brian Wilson Aldiss, OBE (1925 -2017) was an English writer and anthologies editor, best known for science fiction novels and short stories. Greatly influenced by science fiction pioneer H. G. Wells. He was co-president of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group. He received two Hugo Awards, one Nebula Award, and one John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He wrote the short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" (1969), the basis for the Stanley Kubrick-developed Steven Spielberg film A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001).

Wiesław Wernic (1906-1986), popular Polish writer and journalist, best known for his series of Wild West books, sometimes called "Polish Karl May". During World War II fought in the Warsaw Uprising, after the war worked for a Polish daily Rzeczpospolita and weekly "Tygodnik Demokratyczny". Unlike Karl May to whom he was often compared, Wernic visited United States a number of times where he met with American Indians and was a leading authority on the history and customs of the Wild West.

Thomas Michael Keneally, is a prolific Australian novelist, playwright, and essayist. He is best known for writing Schindler's Ark, the Booker Prize-winning novel of 1982 which would later be adapted to Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Pedanius Dioscorides (40 – 90 AD) was a Greek physician, pharmacologist, botanist, and author of De Materia Medica - a 5-volume Greek encyclopedia about herbal medicine and related medicinal substances (a pharmacopeia), that was widely read for more than 1,500 years. He was employed as a physician in the Roman army.

Hothouse is a 1962 science fiction novel by British writer Brian Aldiss, composed of five novelettes. In the novel, Earth now has one side constantly facing the sun (which is larger and hotter than it is at present) so it has become a veritable hothouse, where plants have filled almost all ecological niches. According to Aldiss' account, the US publisher insisted on the name change so the book would not be placed in the horticulture section in bookshops.

East of Eden is a novel by Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck, published in September 1952. Often described as Steinbeck's most ambitious novel, East of Eden brings to life the intricate details of two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, and their interwoven stories.

"Marriage" is a two-act play by the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, which was written in 1832 and first published in 1842. Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809-1852) was a Russian dramatist of Ukrainian origin. Although Gogol was considered by his contemporaries to be one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in his work a fundamentally romantic sensibility,