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"I was driving a dynamite truck when I was 14 years old in North Carolina."
- Harlan Ellison
 |
| Badge Of Office Explosive | ||
| Politicians wear what amounts to a bomb, which is controlled by citizen vote. |
Marvin Goodman was weary of corruption:
Sound familiar? But Marvin Goodman has a solution: a ticket to Tranai!
MARVIN Goodman had lived most of his life in Seakirk, New Jersey, a town controlled by one political boss or another for close to fifty years. Most of Seakirk's inhabitants were indifferent to the spectacle of corruption in high places and low, the gambling, the gang wars, the teenage drinking. They were used to the sight of their roads crumbling, their ancient water mains bursting, their power plants breaking down, their decrepit old buildings falling apart, while the bosses built bigger homes, longer swimming pools and warmer stables. People were used to it. But not Goodman.
| Borg reached for the Presidential Seal, started to remove it from his neck —
It exploded suddenly and violently. Goodman found himself staring in horror at Borg's red, ruined head. The Supreme President tottered for a moment, then slid to the floor. Melith took off his jacket and threw it over Borg's head. Goodman backed to a chair and fell into it. His mouth opened, but no words came out. "It's really a pity," Melith said. "He was so near the end of his term. I warned him against licensing that new spaceport. The citizens won't approve, I told him. But he was sure they would like to have two spaceports. Well, he was wrong." "Do you mean — I mean — how — what — " "All government officials," Melith explained, "wear the badge of office, which contains a traditional amount of tessium, an explosive you may have heard of. The badge is radio-controlled from the Citizens Booth. Any citizen has access to the Booth, for the purpose of expressing his disapproval of the government." Melith sighed. "This will go down as a permanent black mark against poor Borg's record." "You let people express their disapproval by blowing up officials?" Goodman croaked, appalled. "It's the only way that means anything," said Melith. "Check and balance. Just as the people are in our hands, so we are in the people's hands." |
| Technovelgy from A Ticket to Tranai,
by Robert Sheckley. Published by Galaxy in 1955 Additional resources -
|
As the natives say:
Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson had a similar idea in their 1964 novel Reefs of Space. People who are suspected of incorrect behavior are made to wear explosive collars:
"The collar isn't a punishment. It's a precaution."
Compare to the cyborg collar from A Specter is Haunting Texas (1968) by Fritz Leiber.
"We have created a Utopia for human beings, not for saints who don't need one. We must accept the deficiencies of the human character, not pretend they don't exist."
"For they were Risks; and the iron
collars they wore contained eighty
grams of a high explosive. A step
into an area proscribed for Risks
(and such areas were common all
over the world) meant that a triggering radar beam would touch off
the explosive. Ryeland had seen that
happen once. He didn't want it to
happen to him..."
"Precaution?"
He said steadily: "The Machine
has reason to believe that under certain circumstances I might work
against the Plan of Man. I have
never done anything, you must understand that. But the Machine can't
take chances, and so---the collar.
(Explosive collar from "The Reefs of Space" by Pohl and Williamson)
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