Word: basilisk
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Such semantic fastidiousness is more common in philosophy than in fiction, and Adler's stories are more successful as illustrated lectures than as riveting narrative. It should be added that Adler is almost always a riveting lecturer. Like the legendary basilisk, she can look at a subject and turn it to stone. Speedboat is a cascade of smooth and shiny pebbles...
Enter the villain, Basil Yanko, a Yankee basilisk whose mysterious firm, Creative Systems, runs Harlequin's computer operations. He makes two announcements to Paul Desmond, Harlequin's loyal aide: 1) he is prepared to buy out Harlequin, for a suspiciously high figure, and 2) computer print-outs show that Harlequin himself has embezzled $15 million from his own company. It is clear, of course, that Yanko and his minions (this is the sort of novel in which the villain has minions) have framed Harlequin. But can this be proved to the international banking community? And what about Yanko...
...publication of the first English translation of The Book of Imaginary Beings. An alphabetically arranged, cross-cultural bestiary of both famous and faintly known monsters and apparitions, Beings is a spin-off from Borges' vast scholarship. The reader is invited to consider such symbolic creatures as the Basilisk, a remote cousin of Medusa, which kills with its stare. Closer to home is the Pennsylvania Squonk, which dissolves in its own tears when captured. There is also that symbol of incongruity-or sheer perversity -the Hippogriff. It is half horse and half griffon. But that is only half...