Word: alphabets
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...such a master of poisons that he knew exactly what dosage to administer to each of his victims in order to slow their dying and disguise the cause. He even kept a diary detailing his "experiments" on workmates, in which each was identified by a letter in the alphabet. A typical entry: "J-I regard him as a friend so it's out of the question." Later, J got poison in his tea anyway...
...have Salome Jens. She doesn't sink, but she's riding in an awfully leaky barge. Dorothy Parker once wrote that Katharine Hepburn gave a performance that "runs the gamut of emotions from A to B." Miss Jens extends the alphabet perhaps to E, but this just won't do for a role that requires A to Z. Cleopatra is described as a woman of "infinite variety," but Miss Jens approximates this only in her series of what must be nine or ten different--and resplendent--gowns created for her by Jane Greenwood...
...four-year-old Mongoloid boy goes to school, understands counting concepts to ten, knows his colors, and recognizes many letters of the alphabet taken at random. And he's not an outstanding case-he's simply had the advantage of good medical advice, a good school, and lots of love from family, friends and neighbors...
...because man has so recently entered a technological state, any civilization capable of receiving earthly signs might be far more sophisticated. Would it bother to reply? Possibly not, according to Sagan, because the alien race might find men as inferior as men find ants. "Would we bother teaching the alphabet to the ants?" he asks...
...more out of less. At the end of the book, Arthur is snug in an abandoned church with a girl who seems to symbolize science as a dead-end faith. The couple eats whatever falls off passing produce trucks, and Arthur amuses himself by composing epigrams from an incomplete alphabet of movable letters on the church bulletin board. Greenberg's philosophical cartooning is a bit overly contrived, but it succeeds because Greenberg keeps his tale both tactful and short...