Ken Newquist An internet hoax is claiming that an e-mail titled “An Internet Flower For You” contains a virus that destroys hard drives by eating important little files called dynamic link libraries (DLLs). Fortunately, this virus does not exist. Here’s the original e-mail: Date Collected: April 29, 2001 Intel announced that a new and very destructive virus … Read more
Rape is a scary subject, and nothing to joke about. Yet some sicko must of thought it was pretty damn funny, and launched a hoax that’s scaring people around the world. The hoax — which has been circulating via e-mail since 1999 — claims that a new drug called Progesterex which is being used with … Read more
A mother who was tricked by Neiman-Marcus into buying their cookie recipe for $250 is getting her revenge by giving away the pricey culinary instructions on the Internet. Sounds tasty, but this story is an urban legend, and has been circulated in the off-line world for decades. Here’s the original e-mail: This version was collected … Read more
An urban legend about a kidnapped child has been combined with a true story about Wal-Mart’s “Code Adam” program to create a horrifying half-truth-filled e-mail. The first part of the e-mail is a decades-old urban legend: a child is separated from her mother in a large department store. Terrified, she alerts story employees, who in … Read more
Fantasy addicts looking for their next fix of sword and sorcery should check out Robert Jordon’s modern classic The Eye of the World. Published in 1990, the novel is the first in a saga called The Wheel of Time. It opens in the tiny village of Edmond’s Field, where stubborn shepherds raise sheep and equally … Read more
A long-running hoax claims that Congress wants to slap a charge on Internet access, forcing users to pay up every time they log on. It’s a sibling of sorts to the notorious “602P” e-mail that claims the U.S. Postal Service is trying to implement a 5-cent charge on e-mail, and like that other hoax, it’s … Read more
There are a few books that I’ll be reading to my kids from the first day they open their eyes. One is The Hobbit. Another is Wind in the Willows. But first among these books will be the modern fairy tale of Watership Down. The book opens with two rabbits, Hazel and his younger brother … Read more
In Startide Rising, David Brin began the epic adventure of a crew of neo-dolphins, their starship Streaker, and a terrible, war-inspiring secret. He won the Hugo and Nebula awards for the novel, the story of which remained unfinished for years. Now, with the Uplift Storm trilogy, Brin is continuing – but probably not concluding – … Read more
Take the horrors of the Vietnam War, combine them with an advanced state of virtual reality where human soldiers control their soldier boys — or mechanical soldiers — remotely, and throw in a new hi-tech weapon that threatens to end life as we know it, and you have Joe Haldeman’s latest novel, Forever Peace. As … Read more
The end story of the dragonriders of Pern, who guide their magnificent beasts into battle against the menacing, life-devouring Thread, has been told. The saga that began with the first novel, Dragonflight, ended in epic fashion in All the Weyrs of Pern. But while we may know how the story ends, we’re just learning how … Read more