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"I've come across more and more people who've actually tried reading science fiction and can't make it make sense."
- Samuel R. Delany
 |
| Pretentionists | ||
| People who took refuge in the past with their customs and lives. |
| "It's a lot of work, I understand. You decide on the period
you'd like to pretend you are living in. Then you must read up on the period and write your diary and it must be a full account of each day's activities and
not just a sentence or two. You
must make it interesting and, if
you can, exciting..."
He remembered the two women who had talked in the bus seat behind him and he wondered momentarily what illusory satisfaction the Pretentionist living back in Pepys' time might get out of it. There was, of course, Pepys' well filled life, the scurrying about, the meetings with many people, the little taverns where there were cheese and wine, the theatres, the good companionship and the midnight talks, the many interests that had kept Pepys as naturally full of life as these Pretentionists were empty. There were Pretentionists, hiding from the actuality of today, playing dollhouse with the past.
 ('Ring Around the Sun' by Clifford Simak) Cynicism had run out and flippancy had never been more than a temporary shield. So now the people fled to the drug of pretense, identifying themselves with another life and another time and place-at the movie theater or on the television screen or in the Pretentionist movement. For so long as you were someone else, you need not be yourself, vulnerable and afraid. |
| Technovelgy from Ring Around the Sun,
by Clifford Simak. Published by Galaxy Science Fiction in 1952 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the Perky Pat layout from The Days of Perky Pat (1963) by Philip K. Dick.
Thanks to SFFAudio for the tip on this item.
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'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'
'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'
