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"I was perfectly satisfied to write science fiction knowing that it would pay very little, that it would be seen by only a very few people."
- Isaac Asimov
 |
| Commercial Fly | ||
| An autonomous, fly-sized manufactured creature that presents commercial advertisements. |
| Something sizzled to the right of him. A commercial, made by Theodorus Nitz, the worst house of all, had attached itself to his car.
"Get off," he warned it. But the commercial, well-adhered, began to crawl, buffeted by the wind, toward the door and the entrance crack. It would soon have squeezed in and would be haranguing him in the cranky, garbagey fashion of the Nitz advertisements. He could, as it came through the crack, kill it. It was alive, terribly mortal: the ad agencies, like nature, squandered hordes of them. The commercial, flysized, began to buzz out its message as soon as it managed to force entry. "Say! Haven't you sometimes said to yourself, I'll bet other people in restaurants can see me! And you're puzzled as to what to do about this serious, baffling problem of being conspicuous, especially-" Chic crushed it with his foot. |
| Technovelgy from The Simulacra,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Ace in 1964 Additional resources -
|
Here's another quote that gives more details about the device:
"Do people seem able to see right through your clothing?" it squeaked at them, bat-like, as it slithered into concealment under the front seat.
Compare to the scarab robot flying insect from The Scarab (1936) by Raymond Z. Gallun, the infiltrators from Vulcan's Hammer (1960) by Philip K. Dick, and the blurbflies from Nymphomation (2000) by Jeff Noon.
...a Theodorus Nitz commercial slipped in through the open window.
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Tech news articles related to The Simulacra
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- Ford's In-Car Ads From Billboards
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'... 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...'
'The operation that had transformed half his body... had located the control switchboard in his teeth.'
