Word: fictions
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...begin to understand Cruise, you must understand his relationship with the Church of Scientology, an organization that advocates self-styled scientific methods as cures for ailments of the body, mind and spirit. Founded by the prolific science-fiction novelist L. Ron Hubbard, who died in 1986, Scientology has been accused of using coercion to keep its members in line and intimidation to squelch criticism of its tactics. (Scientology sued TIME in 1992 for libel over a 1991 cover story's portrayal of the church as a ruthless cult; the case was decided in TIME's favor in 2001, when...
...Precrime apparatus is so goofily anach-ronistic--three young mind readers floating in a tank and billiard balls rolling through plastic tubes--that your brilliant, mad old uncle could have concocted it in his basement. This two-edged look fits with Spielberg's idea of marrying science fiction with film noir; this is a 50-years-ago detective story set 50 years from...
...visions with everyday familiarity remains intact. Twenty years ago, he showed us an extraterrestrial with a taste for Reese's Pieces. This summer Cruise's 21st century crime fighter walks into a Gap that knows everything about its customers, thanks to retinal-identification scans. "I use [products] in science fiction to ground the audience," he explains. "There are certain iconic images that will pull you back down to earth...
Verne and Vonnegut, Borges and Burgess, Lessing and LeGuin--they all wrote science fiction that was taken seriously during their lives. Philip K. Dick's work, no less serious or searching, was confined to the ghetto of SF (that's the short form, folks--never, ever sci-fi). He stalked through earthly life, through five wives, a drug addiction and a nervous breakdown, seeing his SF novels published in tatty Ace paperbacks, his other fiction regularly rejected. When he died, in 1982, at 53, mainstream readers didn't know Phil Dick...
...gains. What keeps you reading is the mystery of "why," and the smart writing that refuses to answer the question directly. Instead you get a glimpse into the life of someone who could be your brother-in-law, whose story has as much drama and mystery as any overwrought fiction...