ABSTRACT
SMUDGING THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN REAL LIFE AND FICTION In three cities across the United States, dozens of people take part in stormy rallies opposing the emancipation of robots. The protests are real, although they pertain to issues set in the future, in the year 2142, not in 2001, when the rallies actually take place. At about the same time, a young girl sends a moving email to her friends, mourning the death of her grandmother, and she receives 340 sympathetic condolence messages in return. The young girl is a fi ctional character, but the people who write to her are real. And within that same few weeks, at some unidentifi ed-location, a musician tunes up his lute and prepares to play a piece of sixteenth-century music, hoping it will help him fi nd clues to a murder mystery.
