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"[Science fiction] is the only kind of writing that allows you to look at the world we live in and change one piece at a time."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Compulsive Subsonics | ||
| An advertising agency works with every part of the audience's brain. |
In this classic 1950's story, the ad agency works hard to use every bit of technology available to manipulate the public.
| "They outlawed compulsive subsonics in our aural advertising - but we've bounced back with a list of semantic cue words that tie in with every basic trauma and neurosis in American life today. |
| Technovelgy from The Space Merchants,
by Frederik Pohl (w/CM Kornbluth). Published by St. Martin's Press in 1952 Additional resources -
|
When you read this story, you'll be amazed at how well it predicts the future of mass market advertising. At the time the book was written, ad agencies had only been around for about 100 years; the first American advertising agency was opened in 1941. The first big "ad blitz" was organized by none other than P.T. Barnum, who created so much hoopla with newspaper ads, handbills and broadsides advertising the appearance of Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale" to America, that she was met at the docks by 30,000 New Yorkers.
The first great American brands were created at this time; the first advertisement for Smith Brother's Cough Candy (drops) appeared in a Poughkeepsie, New York paper in 1851. (Historical note: the two brothers in the illustration are named "Trade" and "Mark.") Today, we are saturated with brand names; but in the mid-1800's, everything people bought was generic. You went to the grocery store and bought flour, salt, sugar and soap; the grocer removed it from a larger, anonymous package and wrapped it for you. You never knew the manufacturer.
The history of advertising is a great reminder of how much has changed in the last 100 years.
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'He had travelled the space-lanes of the solar system for the greater part of his life...'
'The dinner was excellent. It was completely vegetarian — grown in specially prepared gardens in this Moon base...'
'Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind.'
'It was a relief to enter one of the comfortable autos, whisper a direction down the tube, and just know that you would be taken to your destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest manner.'
'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
'The vast spinning sphere of Factory in the Sky loomed above and ahead of us, gleaming white against the unfathomable jet depths of surrounding space.'
'And if it doesn’t work,' inquired Lazarus, 'what does that make us? Sunspots?'
'The Dillard people had performed a miracle and put all the works in a girl-modeled case.'
'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
