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"Science fiction is the very literature of change. In fact, it is the only such literature we have."
- Frederik Pohl

Fornixation  
  Electrical stimulation of the pleasure centers of the brain.  

"Why not?" Grandpa says. "Mr. and Mrs. Everyman sit on their asses all day, drink, eat, and watch fido, and their brains run to mud and their bodies to sludge. Caesar would have had no trouble surrounding himself with fat friends these days. You ate, too, Brutus?"

Grandpa's comment, however, should not apply to Mrs. Applebaum. She has a hole in her head, and people addicted to fornixation seldom get fat. They sit or lie all day and part of the night, the needle in the fornix area of the brain delivering a series of minute electrical jolts. Indescribable ecstasy floods through their bodies with every impulse, a delight far surpassing any of food, drink, or sex. It's illegal, but the government never bothers a user unless it wants to get him for something else, since a fornic rarely has children. Twenty per cent of LA have had holes drilled in their heads and tiny shafts inserted for access of the needle. Five per cent are addicted; they waste away, seldom eating, their distended bladders spilling poisons into the bloodstream.

Technovelgy from Riders of the Purple Wage, by Philip Jose Farmer.
Published by Doubleday in 1967
Additional resources -

Compare to the droud from Larry Niven's 1969 novel Death by Ecstasy and the pleasure cap from Cordwainer Smith's 1961 novel A Planet Named Shayol.

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  More Ideas and Technology from Riders of the Purple Wage
  More Ideas and Technology by Philip Jose Farmer
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  Tech news articles related to works by Philip Jose Farmer

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