Tourists visit the water forest by boat at a wetland park in Yangzhou City, east China's Jiangsu Province, 30 July, 2023. (Photo by Meng Delong/ImagineChina/Imaginechina via AFP Photo)

Bulgarian Pomak (Bulgarian speaking Muslims) bride Selve Kiselova , 21, has gelina make-up applied to her face ahead of her wedding ceremony in the village of Ribnovo, on December 29, 2024. The people of this Bulgarian mountain village are famous for performing their unique wedding ceremonies in winter time only. Muslim bulgarians are descendants of Christian bulgarians who were forcibly converted to Islam by the Turks, during the 14th, 16th and the 18th century. (Photo by Nikolay Doychinov/AFP Photo)

Filipino typhoon victims walk through heavy mud in the typhoon hit town of Taft, Samar island, Philippines, 08 December 2014. Typhoon Hagupit weakened into a tropical storm as it moved towards the Philippine capital after killing at least 27 people and displacing more than one million people in the eastern and central provinces. Hagupit slammed into the country's eastern coast on 06 December evening, bringing heavy rains and gale-force winds that flattened homes, ripped off roofs, and knocked out power and communications. (Photo by Francis R. Malasig/EPA)

The aerial view shows three uprooted trees at a road near Hildesheim, Germany Friday, October 6, 2017. Seven people died Thursday as high winds knocked over trees and caused widespread travel chaos in northern Germany. (Photo by Julian Stratenschulte/DPA via AP Photo)

William Gibson is not one of the authors that spits out novels like a machine – in his long and fruitful career he has only published 11 novels andof short stories and articles in the tens each. Still his impact on modern literature was huge – the “noir prophet” of the cyberpunk subgenre (that he was one of the pioneers of) has predicted the rise of reality television, virtual reality, video games and the internet. He is a Hugo and Nebula award winning science fiction writer, with a special eye for what the future might bring.

Dutch artist Maxim Gazendam works on his sand sculpture during the third edition of the European Championship Sand Sculpting 2014 in Zandvoort aan Zee, The Netherlands, 08 August 2014. Eight sculptors from different European countries will each create an impressive sculpture on the main theme “Music and Dance”. (Photo by Remko De Waal/EPA)

Highly commended birds : Crested guan by Tim Hunt (UK). ‘This photo shows a crested guan in the cloud forests of Costa Rica as it pauses while foraging on a lone branch. Due to the clouds that are so typical for this habitat, I could often only photograph the bird’s silhouette against a grey sky. But then, for a short moment only, the sun broke through the clouds, and I overexposed the image by over two stops in order to blow out the background and allow this beautifully marked bird to stand out’. (Photo by Tim Hunt/GDT European Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2015)

Aerial view of a clear and turbid landscape at the intersection of the Sanjiang Estuary during the flood season on July 4, 2023 in Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China. (Photo by Chen Guanyan/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images)