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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl

Living Advertising Character  
  Modifying an ordinary person to create a living likeness of a company's brand symbol or character.  

In the novel, which is set hundreds of years into the future, today's brands and companies have solidified into social clan groups. The emphasis on providing customers with a uniform experience in every store is taken to an extreme that would be reachable in the present day.

After six months of surgery and psycho-conditioning, he was identical with the other 496 Mr. Prestos and to the idealized portrait of Mr. Presto which hung behind Presteign's dais ... a kindly, honest man resembling Abraham Lincoln, a man who instantly inspired affection and trust. Around the world purchasers entered an identical Presteign store and were greeted by an identical manager, Mr. Presto. He was rivaled, but not surpassed, by the Kodak clan's Mr. Kwik and Montgomery Ward's Uncle Monty.
Technovelgy from The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester.
Published by Berkley in 1956
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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Stars My Destination
  More Ideas and Technology by Alfred Bester
  Tech news articles related to The Stars My Destination
  Tech news articles related to works by Alfred Bester

Living Advertising Character-related news articles:
  - Meeting Wendy Of Wendy's
  - Betty Crocker, The First Company Avatar

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Meeting Wendy Of Wendy's
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Science Fiction in the News

Thermostabilized Wet Meat Product (Prototype)
There are no orbiting Michelin stars. Yet.

Could Crystal Batteries Generate Power For Centuries?
'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'

India Ponders Always-On Smartphone Location Tracking
'It is necessary... for your own protection.'

Amazon Will Send You Heinlein's Knockdown Cabin
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'

Is It Time To Forbid Human Driving?
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'

Replace The Smartphone With A Connected Edge Node For AI Inference
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'

Artificial Skin For Robots Is Coming Right Along
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'

Robot Guard Dog On Duty
I might also be thinking of K-9 from Doctor Who.

Wearable Artificial Fabric Muscles
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'

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