Word: fictions
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...inspires cultish adoration from folks too old and too smart to be hanging posters on the wall. The group's votaries meet in coffee houses to pore over lyrics. A couple proudly reported naming their children Belle and Sebastian. There's even a website devoted to--no joke--original fiction inspired by B&S songs. What artistic force could cause perfectly normal adults to regress into thoroughly obsessed teens...
Childhood innocence doesn't crop up much these days in serious fiction. Perhaps Freud is to blame, or maybe William Golding, whose Lord of the Flies dramatized the pre-Romantic notion that young folks deprived of civilization will naturally turn into savages. Even children's books now tend to shun wide-eyed wonder and to feature instead little sophisticates dealing knowingly with various forms of family dysfunction...
Well, why shouldn't Hollywood make a science-fiction adventure using animation instead of live action? The Japanese have been doing it for decades (they call it anime). Besides, in Star Wars and its myriad clones the characters, the acting and the plots are already on the cartoony side. So give half a chance to Titan A.E., which has the retro-pioneering spirit of recent s-f movies...
This scenario, in which crypto-wielding cybercriminals take over the world, has become a standard plot device in turn-of-the-century science fiction. I've even used it once or twice. But there is good news on this front. Running the world turns out to be surprisingly challenging. It isn't something an evil mastermind can do just by hitting return on his keyboard...
...encryption forces are the nerds; with a nod to the cyberpunk school of science-fiction writers, they call themselves "cypherpunks." Though their numbers have always been small, cypherpunks are brave, bold and highly motivated. And they have some programming talent...