Word: sci-fi
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...million people who have downloaded SETI@home, a free screen saver (available at setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu that uses your computer's downtime to help sort through the reams of noisy static gathered by radio telescopes. The odds of pulling a Jodie Foster (who snared the elusive extraterrestrial signal in the 1997 sci-fi flick Contact) are a zillion to one. But if you fail--or even if you succeed--nobody's going to burn you at the stake...
Other genres--mystery, thriller, horror, sci-fi--attract no cultural stigma, but those categories also appeal heavily to male readers. Romances do not, and therein, some of the genre's champions argue, lies the problem. "I cannot help but suspect," writes romance author Penelope Williamson, "that romance is so often ridiculed and denigrated because it is a literature written almost exclusively by women for women...
...suffered from a lack of structure (_Snake Eyes_) or moments of utter incomprehensibility (_Mission: Impossible_), and the trend isn't stopping anytime soon. Not if his latest effort, _Mission to Mars_, is any indication. What De Palma improves on his previous problems is negated for rampant use of overdone sci-fi conventions...
...aliens who have crushes on them. Separately, writer Peter Bagge (Hate) and artist Gilbert Hernandez (Luba) have well-deserved reputations as creators of some of comics' most complex female characters. In Yeah!--drawn with a clean line and lively colors--they have collaborated to produce a pop-culture, sci-fi, mainstream comic that finally offers an alternative to Archie...
...latitude lines, so it stands in easily for the earth. But see it from the side, within sight of the floating models of Jupiter and Saturn, and it's the sun. Get underneath, next to the giant tripod that supports it, and it's the underside of a sci-fi space pod. Stand back in a properly reflective mood, and it suggests the expanding bubble of creation itself. And maybe also that famous perisphere at the 1939 World's Fair--not all the associations here are cosmic...