=============================================================================== challenge text =============================================================================== What I am thinking (semi-out loud here) is that writing used to encompass various "genres" in one story. It seems like books have gotten so specialized, few stories do that well any more. I think that Laurell K Hamilton, Diana Gabaldon, and Lois McMaster Bujold do a good job of breaking some of these barriers, but I am not sure I would say their writing is lasting (as much I would like it to be:)). =============================================================================== official text, modified to highlight movie references "there is no spoon" from The Matrix and "holy ship" from The Road to Eldorado: =============================================================================== t o secret operative from evil group of people: h ave you infiltrated bureau thirteen yet? beware of yan and e specially dis; they might be onto us. beware also artemov -- we have r eason to suspect he is a double agent, and not just because of his e thnicity! whoever thought of such a silly stereotype? anyway, i nternal reviews by our advisory panel concluded that our plans might backfire, s ince we actually live on the same world we're supposedly trying to n uke -- we're supposed to be "evil," not hella lame or hella stupid. o ur new goal is to make a lot of money to fund future egop projects s ince we're draining our budget on these blasted encryption keys that are p erpetually getting cracked. once we raise enough money, we might even take o ver the world and place our supreme leader in charge. o k, so, here are the new plans. after infiltrating bureau thirteen, you must n ext discover the secret password so we can access their unix system. they're h iding plans for a top secret device that measures pressure using o nly three molecules. countless computer simultations suggest that it is the l egendary holland-minkley pressure testing device (HMPTD) we have sought for y ears. find and download the plans, then destroy all records to s low down bureau thirteen so they don't beat us to the patent. once we h ave those plans, we will build and market the device and make millions. i f you act with haste and zest, we can all laugh at bureau thriteen in a big p arty celebrating our success.