Word: sf
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...fiction outlived the OTA, it also gets more girls, gold and glory than its other big rival, professional corporate futurology. Corporate trend spotting, after all, is limited to gizmos that might conceivably make someone money. Science fiction, in its sleep and entirely by accident, makes absurd amounts of money: SF films, comic books, action figures, CD-ROMs, computer games, chrome cards, costumes--there...
...SF's saga of the techno-sublime is about power, speed and transcendence of human limits. Ray guns, starships, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, nanotechnology--all beloved of SF, and every last one of them a big Technicolor disruption of the mundane...
Huxley and Orwell, of course, didn't think of themselves as science-fiction writers. The true artists of the genre are a tribe apart. Many created "future histories" that are worked out in exquisite detail. Robert A. Heinlein, for instance, was a hugely popular SF writer but of a surprisingly gloomy and gothic cast. His prediction for the late 20th century was summed up briskly: "Considerable technical advance during this period, accompanied by a gradual deterioration of mores, orientation and social institutions, terminating in mass psychosis." It was hard to watch the Clinton impeachment trial without feeling...
...lotto games -- and 25 percent of the proceeds go to the medical organization. After giving a credit card number, you get java-based games that play like the regular lottery, with odds just about as bad. A potentially confusing stumbling block: Tickets (and winnings) are in Swiss Francs (One SF currently equals 69 cents). Other major charitable and aid organizations are thinking maybe they should get into the web gambling game too. Up next: A Vatican bingo site...
...widened its attack still further. In November it sought to block Fox's effort to buy TV stations in Philadelphia, Boston and Denver, arguing that the FCC could not approve these purchases until it had resolved the SF dispute. Next, citing the 99% ownership disclosure in David Honig's N.A.A.C.P. case, nbc filed a formal request that the commission clarify its rules on foreign control, thereby boosting pressure on the commission to examine Murdoch's ownership. "What are you doing this for?" Murdoch demanded in a telephone call to Robert Wright, president of NBC. "The record is clear...