Word: fictions
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Panama has always been a place where strange truth gives fiction a run for its money. In John le Carre's 1996 novel The Tailor of Panama, a Cockney living in Panama City tricks money out of British intelligence by stitching up a plot involving Asians' taking over the Panama Canal. In real-life Panama, the story is no less peculiar: a new President is about to be sworn in amid charges that the government has switched control of the canal to a company allegedly controlled by the Chinese People's Liberation Army. The catfight over that is just...
Forget that dramatic moment in the film Contact when the radio astronomer played by Jodie Foster rips off her earphones in astonishment after hearing four telltale beeps. Pure fiction, say scientists--and not only because of her hokey headset. When extraterrestrials finally make themselves known, they may not use radio at all. Instead, they're just as apt to signal us with beams of light. Says physicist Freeman Dyson of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.: "It's foolish to try to guess what an extraterrestrial civilization might use. You ought to try all available technologies to detect...
...Angelika, the indie showplace in lower Manhattan where Blair Witch had its theatrical premiere on July 14, a vocal minority is shouting, like a high school football cheer, a chorus of "Bulllllsh__!" But a few persist in believing, even after the final cast and credit roll, that this clever fiction is for real--a documentary that ends in death. "You mean it's not?" asks stunned Chicagoan Paula Taylor. "The website made it sound as if it was. I can't believe...
...website handsomely elaborates on the film's plot by presenting "documents" about the "Blair Witch Mythology, Aftermath and Legend." Anyone who wants to believe in the story or enjoys a smartly designed fiction can browse and learn...
...much of its mission the ship operated somewhat independently of its controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It diagnosed its own systems and navigated with the aid of an electronic brain reminiscent of HAL, the willful computer in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. "What was science fiction a year ago is now science fact," exulted Marc Rayman, the chief mission engineer...