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"...in fifty years, do you believe that people will be recognizably human?"
- Greg Bear
 |
| 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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'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.'
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'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...'
