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"The germinal societies like Singapore and communist Hong Kong may give us a mutant capitalism that is both virulent and efficient. This is a significant cultural danger."
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George and Lydia were wonderful parents; they had spared no expense in providing their children with what they needed. This short story provides a remarkable preview of today's big screen tv, media-drenched household.
But what about those things that children need from parents that money can't buy?
George and Lydia realize that they have made a mistake in letting the house take care of the children's needs (also see the entry for the Happylife Home from the same story). What will the children do when the grownups decide to shut off their beautiful electronic playground? David, the psychologist, hazards a guess:
To learn more about how the modern, multimedia home entertainment system has evolved in the minds of great science fiction writers, be sure to see dimensino - alien entertainment center from Time is the Simplest Thing by Clifford Simak (1961) and rifle range - virtual skeet shooting designed by aliens from Way Station also by Simak (1963).
An interesting contrast can be made to The Veldt, which is designed as an immersive environment, but is still outside the person who is using it. Contrast The Veldt with simstim - play back your internal experience from the 1984 novel Neuromancer by William Gibson, and XV wedge - Photoshop for your mind from Mother of Storms by John Barnes (1994). Both of these authors offer purely internal experience as entertainment. Your mind is, after all, the ultimate source of your personal entertainment.
Bradbury actually described this idea a year earlier in There Will Come Soft Rains:
The nursery walls glowed.
Animals took shape: yellow giraffes, blue lions, pink antelopes, lilac panthers cavorting in crystal substance. The walls were glass. They looked out upon color and fantasy. Hidden films clocked though the well-oiled sprockets, and the walls lived. The nursery floor was woven to resemble a crisp cereal meadow. Over this ran aluminum roaches and iron crickets, and in the hot still air butterflies of delicate red tissue wavered among the sharp aroma of animal spoors! There was the sound like a great matted yellow hive of bees within a dark bellows, the lazy bumble of a purring lion. And there was the patter of okapi feet and the murmur of a fresh jungle rain, like other hoofs falling upon the summer-starched grass. Now the walls dissolved into distances of parched weed, mile on mile, and warm endless sky. The animals drew away into thorn brakes and water holes.
It was the children's hour.
He also used it in The World the Children Made published in The Saturday Evening Post the same year:
(Bradbury: The World Children Made)
Now the hidden odorophonics were beginning to blow a wind of odor at the two people in the middle of the baked veldtland. The hot straw smell of lion grass, the cool green smell of the hidden water hole, the great rusty smell of the animals, the smell of dust like a red paprika in the hot air. And now the sounds - the thump of distant antelope feet on grassy sod, the papery rustling of vultures. A shadow passed through the sky...
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Science Fiction
Timeline
SpaceX Intros Extravehicular Activity Suit
'Provision had been made to meet the terrific cold which we knew would be encountered the moment we had passed beyond the atmosphere.'
Athena Smart Security Guard Robot With Face Recognition
'You are who we say you are, Dr. Dakin,' Turner said.'
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'It's area, and its consequent light-gathering capacity, was many times greater than any rigid mirror...'
Robot Preachers Found To Undermine Religious Commitment
'Tell me your torments,' the Padre said, in an elderly voice marked with compassion.
SpaceHopper Microgravity Robot Lands On Its Feet
'...a slender-legged tripod surmounted by a spherical body no larger than a football.'
Brin's 1990 Novel Earth Still Full Of Predictions
'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
Gaia - Why Stop With Just The Earth?
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'
Microsoft VASA-1 Creates Personal Video From A Photo
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'
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