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"I wrote many novels which … contained the element of the projected collective unconscious, which made them simply incomprehensible to anyone who read them, because they required the reader to accept my premise that each of us lives in a unique world."
- Philip K. Dick
 |
| Mirrorshades - Surgically Inset Glasses | ||
| Glasses that were implanted in the face of the wearer. |
In an age of affordable surgery to correct problems like short-sightedness, it was unusual for a person to wear corrective lenses. Much more unusual for the lenses to be implanted in the face, rendering the eyes permanently unreadable.
| He realized that the glasses were surgically inset, sealing her sockets. The silver lenses seemed to grow from smooth pale skin above her cheekbones, framed by dark hair cut in a rough shag. |
| Technovelgy from Neuromancer,
by William Gibson. Published by Phantasia Press in 1984 Additional resources -
|
Why would a person choose such a modification? Molly, whose glasses I refer to, did choose to conceal much of her life in the course of her employment as razor girl.
When the Finn scanned her, said "Your glasses gimme the read they always have, low-temp isotropic carbons. Better compatibility with pyrolitics, but that's your business, right?"
In his blog, William Gibson has this to say about Molly's mirrorshades:
The character having emerged, very handily, in an early short story, when I hadn't been much concerned with this particular detail, and not having expected to see her again, I found myself, as more Molly narratives emerged, concerned by my inability to satisfactorily envision the way in which the damned things were attached. My solution to this, ongoing, was to keep the "camera" off that troubling little detail. To blur around it with language. The "mirrored implants" worked wonders for the character, in fact largely *were* the character, but there was never, really, any "really" there.
With Molly Millions' "implanted" glasses, though, I could never dream up a sufficiently convincing way to imagine them being attached. Were they "implanted" in skin, muscle, bone, all of these? How would any of these impact on the mobility of her features? What would the seam between skin and mirror look like?
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| Amazon Blimp Parent Drone Concept |
| Tortoise Mobile Smart Stores |
| Sony Pocket Air Conditioner Is Phil Dick's Idea! |
| ROAM Robotics Skiing Exoskeleton |
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'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
'Oscar picked up a trowel. 'I'm the tool for the mortar,' the little trowel squeaked cheerfully.'
'... he waited for the robotrix attendant to finish fueling up his ship.'
The Roujin Z system provides care to fully bedridden patients - and then some!
'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
