Word: isn
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...overpowering assumption, an assumption, an assumption so cosmic that it is sometimes accepted. For example, we wrote that it is pretty obvious that the vague generality is the key device in any discussion of examination writing. Why is it so obvious? As a matter of fact, it isn't so obvious, but rather just an arbitrary point from which to start. That is an example of an unwarranted assumption...
...that three-score-and-ten, though it may be long enough for a very crude sort of village life, isn't long enough for a complicated civilization like ours? Flinders Petrie has counted nine attempts at civilization made by people exactly like us; and every one of them failed just as ours is failing. They failed because the citizens and statesmen died of old age or overeating before they had grown out of schoolboy games and savage sports and cigars and champagne. The signs of the end are always the same: Democracy, Socialism, and Votes for Women...
...future reference: she will be lightly tanned during the summer months; the word alabaster will be appropriate beginning midway through the month of November." The real problem, however, was in the quality of the writing. "Everybody has the feeling they can write a bestseller," says McGrady. "But it simply isn't true. Some of the chapters were much too good, and I had to work like hell to make them bad enough...
...Steppenwolf's lyrics ("Get the motor running/Shoot out on the highway/Looking for adventure/And whatever comes our way/Hey darling gonna make it happen/Take the world in a love embrace/Fire all of our guns at once and explode into space") and these disjunct moods clash to disengage the viewer. And isn't there something obscene in playing Jimi Hendrix's "If 6 was 9" while Wyatt and Billy shoot past the shacks of the Deep South's black population ("If the sun refuse to shine/I don't mind, I don't mind/If the mountains fell in the sea/Let...
This novel's other basic appeal is much more telling. The Andromeda Strain is not really science-fiction in any strict sense. The "science" it treats is too commonplace--even if sophisticated--and it isn't really that speculative. Instead, this book represents a kind of "government-fiction"--the most recent development in the genre of the Washington Novel...