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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is one solution to the Great Silence, according to the narrator of the story with the same name?
(a) That intelligent species do not like humans.
(b) That intelligent species communicate through images.
(c) That intelligent species do not communicate.
(d) That intelligent species hide their presence.

2. According to the narrator of "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom," prisms have a limited amount of what?
(a) Ions.
(b) Neutrinos.
(c) Quarks.
(d) Protons.

3. Who is Rosemary in "Omphalos"?
(a) Dorothea’s aunt.
(b) Dorothea’s neighbor.
(c) Dorothea’s sister.
(d) Dorothea’s cousin.

4. According to the narrator of "The Great Silence," what word means both hope and breathing?
(a) Exhalation.
(b) Emanation.
(c) Aspiration.
(d) Emission.

5. Scientist Peter Silitonga performed experiments using what two things to prove using a prism was enough to make two branches diverge, in "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom"?
(a) Astronomy and genetics.
(b) Weather and conception.
(c) Oceanography and marriages.
(d) Tree rings and genetic analysis.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the real name for the Great Silence?

2. According to Jijingi, what is mimi?

3. Following his son’s death, what does Lionel do?

4. As "Omphalos" begins, in which city has Dorothea just arrived?

5. According to the narrator at the end of "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling," why has he begun creating his own lifelog?

Short Essay Questions

1. What are the Atacama mummies and what do they reveal to the world, according to "Omphalos"?

2. Who is Angela in "The Truth of Facts, the Truth of Feeling"? What does the reader learn about her on page 186?

3. What is the focus of the advertisements for the Automatic Nanny?

4. Who stole the relics, as Dorothea discovers on page 252 of "Omphalos"? How does this person justify the theft?

5. How is Edmund a product of his childhood in "Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny"?

6. What happens after the Automatic Nanny hits the market in 1901? Why does it ultimately fail?

7. Why does Lionel Dacey resurrect the Automatic Nanny?

8. What are contact calls, as explained in "The Great Silence"? What do they have in common with Arecibo?

9. Who is Peter Silitonga in "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom" and what does he discover?

10. What does the extinction of its species mean to the narrator in "The Great Silence"?

(see the answer keys)

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