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"To get anywhere, or even live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer."
- Robert Heinlein
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| News Clown | ||
| A person who delivers specially selected light news. |
This is not a device, so it does not, strictly speaking, belong here. However, I'm adding it anyway.
| An hour before his morning program on channel six, ranking news clown Jim Briskin sat in his private office with his production staff, conferring on the report of an unknown possibly hostile flotilla detected at eight hundred astronomical units from the sun. It was big news, of course. But how should it be presented to his several-billion viewers scattered over three planets and seven moons?
Peggy Jones, his secretary, lit a cigarette and said. "Don't alarm them, Jim-Jam. Do it folksy-style... "Folksy-style," Jim Briskin said glumly. "I grin and say, Hey look comrades - it's happened at last, the thing we all feared, ha ha..." "Is there any lighter piece of news?" Peggy asked. "By which you could open your program? The sponsor would like that... See what you can do. Mutant cow obtains voting franchise in court case in Alabama... you know." |
| Technovelgy from Stand-By,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Galaxy in 1963 Additional resources -
|
Just in case you thought that the trend toward news as entertainment was a recent idea.
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Science Fiction
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'You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard...'
''OVERRIDE,' the City Fathers said suddenly, without being asked anything at all.'
'... they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to.'
'... the expressionless face before me was therefore that of the golem-wrestler, Rolem, a creature that could be set for five times the strength of a human being.'
'Waldo put his arms into the primary pair before him; all three pairs, including the secondary pair mounted before the machine, came to life.'
'... the glittering little rocket bolted to the black iron behind him.'
'The slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector...'
