On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, SMCharnas wrote:
> At 8:48 AM 7/16/97, Martha Bartter wrote: > > >The last I heard about
that, someone had pretty well proved that the > >whole scandal had been
either invented or exaggerated -- that no group > >actually like the Ik
had even existed. > > Good God -- not another Tasaday Incident! This
century is miserably > rich in fancy public baloney. Oy. This isn't the
> Information Age. It's the Age of Fakes.
NH: At Readercon this weekend past, Chip Delany predicted on a panel that
one big issue for this age will be Disinformation. I had a shock recently
too, when I was substantially into the writing of a novel whose premise
had to do with bootlegging of human body parts in third world countries.
Thought I'd done my research--everything from tv documentaries through
journal articles and web-surfing. Then I began to find claims that a lot
of the information was bogus. Found enough information both confirming
and disproving the 'facts' that finally I had no clue whom to believe. I
had to abandon the premise altogether and recobble my novel out of the
remaining bits. Brr.
-nalo
"Straight she's fantastical, they all do cry."
-Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle,
"Nature's Pictures," 1656
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