Word: fictions
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...worst attack of worms, a kind of computer virus that replicates itself automatically. Though they sound like science fiction, worms spring from the minds of virus writers, who could be sitting at any computer in the world. Most spread because we do careless things like open e-mail attachments from strangers, but some have evolved to spread through computer networks on their own--like plague bacilli that have become airborne...
...Room is to be released the same day, prematurely savaged Yellow Dog in a widely quoted newspaper article last month. Other literary types piled on, sniffing in print that Amis' 10th novel would surely not be nominated for next month's Man Booker Prize, Britain's top fiction award and one the author - unlike his father - has never won. Yet the novel soon made the 23-strong list of Booker candidates (Fischer's didn't), and last week London bookmakers had it 8 to 1 to win, trailing only J.M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello. So how is the book...
Summer page turners tend to sidestep the finer points of 6th century church history. Perhaps that is their loss. The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, now in its 18th week on the New York Times hard-cover fiction best-seller list, is one of those hypercaffeinated conspiracy specials with two-page chapters and people's hair described as "burgundy." But Brown, who by book's end has woven Magdalene intricately and rather outrageously into his plot, has picked his MacGuffin cannily. Not only has he enlisted one of the few New Testament personages whom a reader might arguably imagine...
...entertaining. It’s the two-drink minimum version of Congress, as my brother would say. Kind of a barroom brawl, with Tony Blair in the hotseat, a place that anyone involved in this Iraq debacle belongs. I relished it, though I relished it as a piece of fiction, as a film, as well as a truth: better drama than the West Wing any day. Tony Blair sits there in a clean white shirt, no jacket and a striped tie, trying desperately through equally desperate hand gestures to convey his good intentions. Our reason was good, he argues?...
...denial. And even a gift-wrapped final scenario can leave questions unanswered. Inevitable Surprises warns that we're "facing the inevitability of another global plague," without giving an insight into its timing, source or nature. Still, Schwartz's writing carries a stubborn credibility, even as he brushes with science fiction, predicting, for example, physical teleporting by 2050. Perhaps our cynical era craves being told metanarratives, even while we can see the cracks. Was it easier at Delphi? Perhaps. Once we get that teleporter working, maybe we can go back and see what the future used to look like...