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"All fiction is propaganda, and the fiction we like is the propaganda we believe in, and the fiction we don't like is the propaganda we don't believe in."
- Samuel R. Delany
 |
| Analogue Treatment | ||
| Hypnotic drug treatment that normalizes behavior in humans. |
| I'm immune to analogue treatment. I didn't know it
for sure till I was ten, but I think
I was born that way. From
seven on, I remember the other
kids talking about their Guardians, and me pretending I had
one, too. You know how kids
are — anything to be part of
the gang.
"But for a long time, years, I wasn't certain whether everyone else was pretending like me, or whether I really was the only one without an invisible Guardian to talk to. I was pretty sure the kids were lying when they said they could see theirs, but whether they were there at all or not was another question... "When I was ten, I stole some- thing... Funny, I was halfway out before it struck me that I'd just proved I had no Guardian. "I had sense enough, thank God, to burn that book after I'd finished reading it. If I hadn't, I don't suppose I would have lived to grow up." "Should think not" Wolfert said, his eyes fixed on Falk, alert, wary. "One man without any control could turn the whole applecart over. But I thought immunity was theoretically impossible." "I've thought about that a good deal. According to classic psychology, it is. I'm not unusually resistant to hypnotic drugs; I go under all right. But the censor mechanism just doesn't respond. I've had the notion that I may be a mutation, developed in response to the analogue treatment as an anti-survival factor. But I don't know. As far as I've ever been able to find out, there are no more like me." |
| Technovelgy from Ticket to Anywhere,
by Damon Knight. Published by Galaxy Magazine in 1952 Additional resources -
|
This treatment has been applied to everyone:
Wolfert grimaced wryly. "Well?
It's a peaceful world, anyhow."
"Sure," said Falk. "No war or
possibility of war, no murders,
no theft, no crime at all. That's
because every one of them has a
policeman inside his skull.
Compare to the control helmet from Easy Money (1938) by Edmond Hamilton, the Methuen Treatment from The Exalted (1940) by L. Sprague de Camp and CAN-D from The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) by Philip K. Dick.
"There are fewer and fewer
people who have to be put away
in madhouses — not because of
any improvement in therapy, but
because the analogue techniques
are getting better and better. The
guy who would have been hopelessly insane fifty years ago now
has a little man inside his head,
controlling him, making him act
normal. On the outside, he is
normal; inside, he's a raving mad-
man. Worse still, the guy who
would have been just a little bit
cracked, fifty years ago — and
gotten treatment for it — is now
just as mad as the first guy. It
doesn't matter any more. We
could all be maniacs and the
world would go on just as before."
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'Deveet unhooked his catch and laid it on the bank beside him. It was a metal fish.'
'...waldoes in the screen followed in exact, simultaneous parallelism.'
'Seen close it was not completely flexible, but made instead of pivoted and smoothly finished segments.'
'...great rectangular slabs of muscle, slung into a rectangular frame.'
'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."
