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"People ask me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research. I just enjoy reading the stuff, and some of it sticks in my mind and fits into the stories."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Bohemias | ||
| A place where the ordinary rules of society don't apply; the "next big thing" often comes from these places. |
I've been wondering what happens when every culture and subculture on Earth has been mined for icons and archetypes (for use in cartoons and movies), foods and flavors (for use in recipe books and theme restaurants) and music. It took some of these cultures thousands of years to develop into something interesting.
| They were a crucial aspect of industrial civilization in the previous two centuries. They were where industrial civilization went to dream. A sort of unconscious R&D., exploring alternate societal strategies. Each one would have a dress code, characteristic forms of artistic expression… And they did, frequently, have locales with which they became associated. But they became extinct. |
| From All Tomorrow's Parties,
by William Gibson. Published by Putnam in 1999 Additional resources -
|
Why? Because we started picking them before they could ripen. Authentic subcultures required backwaters, and time , and there are no more backwaters in our completely and instantly connected world.
What can we do to encourage the undisturbed growth of culture? Maybe John Brunner had the right idea with paid avoidance zones in his 1975 book The Shockwave Rider.
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'I brought it back to the ship, charged it up, reprogrammed the inertia chips and voila!'
'Their playmates were not “real,” but they were a lot realer than, say, a Betsy-Wetsy doll.'
'pirate three-vee satellites sanded out of orbit...'
'Oh, there you are! the balloon piped at the amorphous mass of living tissue...'
'... the imprint of her image on the telephoto cell.'
'The entire expanse, twenty kilometers square, was covered ... the photo-electric elements which transformed the solar heat direct into electric energy.'
'Chia recognized the square as the control-face of the computer she'd seen in his room.'
'The automatic packing machine could pack anything from a small package a few inches square up to a box two feet high by three feet long.'
