Word: fabric
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...wished I were back in the laundromat, running out of fabric softener. "How did you do that?" I choked...
...seems to occur when a pressing social need is met by a particularly useful innovation, like the steam engine or telephone. As it happened, only a few visionaries like Clarke anticipated the need for satellites. Yet somehow, in less than a generation, they have firmly established themselves in the fabric of contemporary life, shrinking time and space, almost as if the world craved to be brought closer together. Perhaps the space age's real giant steps were not the ones on the moon but the ones that are being taken overhead, like Columbia's flight, every passing moment...
...answer: Of course. It then proceeds to describe the rivalry between the altruistic Foundation and two less noble competitors for the heart and mind of the cosmos. As the breathless plot caroms on, Asimov winks at his audience. Interplanetary rocketeers not only take advantage of hyperspace (folds in the fabric of the universe) to bridge the light-years between one solar system and another; they also use English and credit cards. Rare is the author who can resume a story after a pause of three decades, but Asimov has never been predictable in anything but fecundity. This is his 260th...
...alternative lives. Their author proved over the years that the ramshackle, theoretically condemned house of story telling still has some unexplored chambers and fresh air. "Fiction," he once said, "is a tissue of literal lies that refreshes and informs our sense of actuality. Reality is-chemically, atomically, biologically-a fabric of microscopic accuracies...
...weather yet, the National Football League strike still seems as much a novelty as a catastrophe. Without baseball, summer might as well be canceled; lazy days depend on it. But doesn't pro football occupy only a narrow space, somewhere between church services and Sunday supper, in the fabric of American life? Then why has the country been on red alert since last Tuesday? If the owners can afford to lose $38 million a week, and the players $7 million, quarreling over control of the game, who cares, except a few bookies, broadcasters and bankers, unless, maybe...