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"[Science fiction] has become big business, where books are merchandised and promoted and distributed and placed on sale like slabs of bacon or cans of soup."
- Frederik Pohl
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| 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... |
| Technovelgy from If There Were No Benny Cemoli,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Galaxy Publishing in 1953 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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and Technology by Philip K. Dick
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- China Now Has Robot Journalists
- News Now Philip K. Dick's Bailiwick
- AI Tool Lynx Insight And The Cybernetic Newsroom
- Poor Humans. Miami Herald Bot Writes Great Real Estate Articles.
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| Narrative Science And Phil Dick's Homeostatic Newspaper |
| BookTrack Adds Sound To Books |
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'If the biological robots were not living creatures, they were certainly very good imitations.'
"Everybody and his dog, it seemed, wanted to live out in the country; transportation and communication were no longer isolating factors."
'... the new typewriter that could be talked to, and which transposed the spoken sound into typed words.'
'... underneath they consisted of networks of cooling tubes against the skin.'
'My cars talk to one another. I have no doubt about it...'
'... the imprint of her image on the telephoto cell.'
