Word: fictions
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...work of Miguel Alcubierre, who suggested in a 1994 paper that the space-time continuum could be modified within the framework of Einstein's theory of general relativity to allow a spaceship to travel faster than light--much like the "warp drives" of science fiction. Serious physicists don't dismiss such theories out of hand, describing them as intriguing thought experiments that could conceivably be proved true in, oh, say, 300 or 400 years...
Trisha L. Manoni '99, an English concentrator, wasn't terribly excited at the prospect of spending her senior year writing a thesis. More interested in creative writing than literary criticism, Manoni wanted to take more courses in fiction writing--rather than focusing on a single aspect of literary analysis for one year...
...this is science fiction. Let's turn the page now and get back to real science...
Such scenarios are not science-fiction. With the prestidigitation of gene-amplification, only a single drop of blood or a snippet of hair or a scraping of skin can reveal the full length of the human genome, including its myriad flaws. And the potential for abusing that information is already here, as a surprised Paul Billings found in surveys of testing abuses that he conducted. "I advertised for people who had had negative experiences with social agencies, insurers or employers after genetic diagnosis, and I was shocked by the response." The most common complaint was against hard-nosed health insurers...
...manipulations are unlikely to be attempted for frivolous reasons. Nor does the state of today's science provide the knowledge that would be needed to generate "superpersons" whose far-ranging talents would make those who are genetically unmodified feel redundant and unwanted. Such creations will remain denizens of science fiction, not the real world, far into the future. When they are finally attempted, germ-line genetic manipulations will probably be done to change a death sentence into a life verdict--by creating children who are resistant to a deadly virus, for example, much the way we can already protect plants...