Word: homunculus
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Scientists may never be able to emulate Faust's student, Wagner, and create a homunculus, or artificial man. But they seem to be moving steadily closer to the day when they will be able to reproduce the DNA molecule essential to life. Harvard University Biochemists Argiris Efstratiades, Fotis Kafatos, Thomas Maniatis and Allen Maxam report that they have copied a mammalian gene, a unit of the DNA molecule that transmits a specific inherited trait. Their creation: the gene that orders the production of hemoglobin-a blood component-in rabbits...
...reader vaguely recalls a lovely term for a mirage-something Italianate. He checks Bernstein under "mirage, especially as observed in the Strait of Messina" and finds fata morgana. "Midget or dwarf leads to homunculus. "Ecstasy of a religious nature" brings forth theopathy. "Misstroke or misplay" discovers foozle...
...passes one crucial test for the matinee trade: go out for popcorn and you will probably miss something good. Among the movie's major attractions are a one-eyed centaur, a winged griffin, a six-armed bronze goddess who comes to deadly life, and a rather testy flying homunculus. These creatures have their origin in the imagination and the work shop of Ray Harryhausen, a special effects whiz. He brings them all alive in a process called Dynarama, which would appear to combine equal portions of stop-action photography, elaborate multiple exposures and a kind of gentle necromancy. Golden...
...wrote Diary of a Mad Housewife. Her fine, deadpan humor this time lies in the narrator's calm assumption that these hideosities, and others, are quite normal. Emma's eleven-year-old son has changed, for no clear reason, from a bright little boy into a neurotic homunculus. Her husband, slyly cast as a successful publishing exec, is an insane hypochondriac and grunting lecher. Worst of all, her cheerful, friendly black maid, who quit some time ago to start a catering business, is hired to run one of Emma's dinner parties and turns up utterly transmogrified...
...rate, young Whalen is an ex-junky, an inept lecher, and a petulant, sadistic jerk. Even such a figure might conceivably be observed to good effect, but Kosinski perceives nothing of unusual interest in the homunculus he has created. A succession of brief, turgid scenes demonstrates Whalen's emptiness, a quality that is never in doubt; nothing in the book offers any insight into the author's reasons for pursuing such an unrewarding project. One of Kosinski's few gestures toward literary excellence amounts to a stylistic tic: his repeated use of Grim Bits from Mother Nature...