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"Science fiction and science have always danced around each other. Science fiction is the subconscious of science."
- Greg Bear
 |
| Homeostatic Newspaper | ||
| An autonomous news-gathering and publishing entity; abbreviated as homeopape. |
In the story, representatives from CURB (Centaurus Urban Renewal Board) newly arrived from Proxima Centaurus try to make sense of what happened during "the Misadventure" - an atomic war that destroyed almost all life on Earth.
| "The structure," the minor CURBman said, "was once a great homeostatic newspaper, the New York Times. It printed itself directly below us... We haven't located the newspaper yet; it was customary for the homeopapes to be buried a mile or so down..."
"...the entire network of newspaper communication and news-creation has been idle since [the Misadventure]... Early the next morning the report from the corps of engineers reached Hood in his temporary office. The power supply of the newspaper had been totally destroyed. But the cephalon, the governing brain structure which guided and oriented the homeostatic system, appeared to be intact... |
| From If There Were No Benny Cemoli,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Galaxy Publishing in 1963 Additional resources -
|
The homeopape is also described as "a vast complex electronic organism buried deep in the ground, responsible to no one, guided solely by its own ruling circuits." The homeopape gathered information by utilizing "news-gathering services" and "news receptors."
Each edition of the homeopape is printed up and then delivered to a variety of outlets, including kiosks.
In this story, the homeopape begins to describe the political progress of a certain Benny Cemoli, a pre-Misadventure activist political figure who certainly no longer exists. However, the 'pape continues to chronicle his progress throughout the story.
In the story, Dick uses the idea of a newspaper that creates itself to mock our certainty that there is a single, shared sequence of objectively verifiable events. However, a homeopape is more than just a literary device; Google News, which is created without any human intervention, is certainly the first homeostatic newspaper.
PKD continued to work with this literary device; see the article on homeopape for more information.
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'...a 2045 convertible with a Hennis-Carleton positronic motor and an Armat chassis.'
'You can hook a Thorsen tube into a control circuit... and the tube will "remember" what was done and can direct the operation...'
Nature is a master of fabricating structured materials consisting of living and non-living components.
'The tiny devices chirped their impulse codes at one another...'
Then some unknown race had chanced upon the dreamers and decided to "help them out."
'Improving man by bringing him close to Nature, while they combine the sensations of coasting with the interest of seeing the country well...'
Um, how about that pension for the humans who serve as the models for robot behavior?
