Word: fictional
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...excitement about the landing and the first photographs, none of the Viking scientists seemed particularly disappointed that the pictures showed no obvious signs of life-no lichen, bushes or trees, nothing even remotely resembling an animal or the monsters or little green men beloved by generations of science-fiction writers. Said Exobiologist Carl Sagan: "The pictures do not suggest that the planet is filled, pole to pole, with living things." But, noted Sagan, nothing in the pictures ruled out the existence of life on the planet either. Soffen added that the lander's immediate vicinity held half a dozen...
...only unerring rule of faith and practice." But they also believe in the "Spirit of Prophecy," which for them is manifested in White's 2,000 or so visions, which she described in her voluminous writings. Among other things she opposed involvement in labor unions, the reading of fiction and the bearing of arms (Adventists are not conscientious objectors, but most serve in the military only as medics...
Superhumans? Subhumans? Figments of a science-fiction writer's imagination? In fact, the Dani are living quite nicely, thank you, in the Grand Valley of West Irian (formerly West New Guinea), where they were studied for 2½ years by Karl Heider, an anthropologist from the University of South Carolina. Heider, who has taught at Harvard, Brown and Stanford, describes the abstemious sexual behavior of the 5,000-member tribe in the current issue of Man, the journal of Britain's Royal Anthropological Institute. He reports finding no strong sanctions against sexual activity or any other ready explanation...
...stargazing on the Tonight show. But the attraction to heavenly bodies persists. In an age when science and philosophy dress in basic black, colorful beliefs about the personal influence of the stars flourish-particularly in a specialized union of pseudo scholarship and science fiction that could be called fiction science. Like astrology or its medieval cousin alchemy, fiction science tries to explain the unknown through a system of symbolic beliefs-a kind of mythology purportedly based on scientific reason. Like religion, FS's principal aim is to explain the mysterious origin of life on earth. In that sense...
Mass UFOria. Bookstore browsers can testify that the FS imagination has been working overtime. Currently the best-read fiction science (more than 30 million paperback copies sold) is Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods? and its sequels. Von Däniken, a former Swiss hotelman and convicted embezzler with no formal scientific training, professes the notion that the species Homo sapiens was created when astronauts from outer space descended to earth about 10,000 years ago and copulated with apes. It was a kind of one-night stand. According to the author, the satiated aliens...