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"At its best, SF is the medium in which our miserable certainty that tomorrow will be different from today in ways we can't predict, can be transmuted to a sense of excitement and anticipation, occasionally evolving into awe."
- John Brunner
 |
| 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. |
| From The Simulacra,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by 1964 in Ace 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.
Jeff Noon does an interesting update on this idea in his 2000 novel Nymphomation; see the entry for blurbfly.
...a Theodorus Nitz commercial slipped in through the open window.
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and Technology from The Simulacra
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and Technology by Philip K. Dick
Tech news articles related to The Simulacra
Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
Commercial Fly-related
news articles:
- Commercial Flies Sport Tiny Banner Ads
| Sonitus Audio Interface Positioned Beyond The Noise |
| FlexPai Foldable Phone By Royole |
| BrainNet Social Network Of Brains |
| Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI) Workshop |
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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