You could send your potential paramour a perfume bottle, a cigar cutter, travel plans — or maybe some cocaine.
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You searched for: Fiction
A unique combination of DNA and silica is the strongest known material for its density (but you’ll need a lot of it before you can build a suit from it).
People naturally judge fact from fiction in offline social settings, so why is it so hard online?
Positron emission tomography (PET) scans use positrons — the antimatter equivalent of an electron — to locate cancer in the body.
What is Captain America doing in ancient Mesopotamia?
According to Tolkien, fantasy requires a deep imagination known as "sub-creation." And the genre reflects a fundamental truth of being human.
We imagine and debate the inner lives of literary characters, knowing there can be no truth about their real motives or beliefs. Could our own inner lives also be works of fiction?
The fellowship's journey through Middle-Earth mirrors the modernization of the English countryside.
Aliens are often portrayed in popular culture as humanoid. But in reality, intelligent extraterrestrials might take far stranger forms.
Voyage into the lawless world of experimental literature.
The concept of the warp drive is currently at odds with everything we know to be true about physics.
Since 1962, humanity has been sending messages into space with the intent to make contact with intelligent extraterrestrials. Are those efforts worth the risks?
In the future, people may look back with horror at how humans treated AI in the 21st century.
Intentions tend to get mangled by overreach in every complex organization — so dial up the charisma and the clarity.
A true scientific view of if, where, and when extraterrestrial life exists is within our grasp thanks to biosignatures and technosignatures.
People who have a regional accent might prefer robots who speak like them over generic voices.
Some authors never saw their books score widespread acclaim—or even get published at all.
Take a trip through these master-crafted fantasy societies and ask yourself: Could I actually live there?
With great power comes retcon responsibility.
See the world through the eyes of a horse — or a cake pan.
Perhaps we should be searching for “other Mercurys” rather than “other Earths.”
Want to write a time-travel story? Do so at your own risk.
The Antarctic Treaty of 1959 prohibited nations from making new land claims on the continent. But it never mentioned claims from private individuals.
A relatively new interpretation of quantum mechanics asks us to reimagine the process of science itself.
Big Think columnist Adam Frank makes the case for why the 2023 video game Alan Wake 2 is a boundary-pushing piece of art.
Implanting machine components into human bodies, argues one scholar, could make for a better society.
For some people, the emotional pull of fictional characters is profoundly strong.
Uploading your mind is not a pathway to immortality. Instead, it will create a possibly hostile digital doppelgänger.
Equations that describe time travel are fully compatible and consistent with relativity — but physics is not mathematics.
Until robots understand jokes and sarcasm, artificial general intelligence will remain in the realm of science fiction.