From: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (floyd)
Subject: Re: Less-Speculative SF (was Re: reality?
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Date: Thu, 8 Oct 92 22:26:51 GMT

In article <16117@mindlink.bc.ca> Jeremy_Reimer@mindlink.bc.ca (Jeremy Reimer) writes:
|> pinkerton floyd writes:
|>
|>
|> In article <16075@mindlink.bc.ca> Jeremy_Reimer@mindlink.bc.ca (Jeremy
|> Reimer) writes:
|>
|> |Max Headroom didn't start out with "20 minutes into the future" for nothing
|> |folks.
|>
|> Erick Erikson wrote that he believed people are impatient idealists,
|> a statement I have always disagreed with to a alrge extent.  I think
|> the popularity of cyberpunk proves the statement is wrong,
|> particularly shows like Max Headroom who boast so loudly about "this
|> is what it's going to be like...soon!"....
|
|No, I think you've missed my point.  It's more like "this is what it's like
|NOW, but most people are too tuned-out to realize" and that's NOT idealism,
|it's more of a scare tactic, like George Orwell's 1984 exceptith apathy
|replacing brute fascism as humanity's worst enemy.

Hmm...I agre to an extent, but there are some important socio-economic
and technical differences between our world and that of Max
Headroom...Mainly in that are world is not yet entirely governed by
megacorps, we do not have the all-too-familiar urban decay to the
extent HeadroomEarth did, we have more than a 2-class system, etc...

And in regards to the scare tactic, I think Headroom was intended to
be more of science fiction than to make a point about our current
culture despite the funkeE catch-phrasing...I sincerely doubt American
society would allow itself to be apathetic to he point of the
"peasants" in Headroom...Especially when you have people like Edison
Carter being fairly outspoken against apathy (the bracelet episode
comes to mind) - if Edison Carter is as popular as he seems to be,
than at least the peole who wish to emulate him in his status of
role-model/famous-guy would take it upon themselves to emulate his
societal concerns... While it does make a statement about where we
*might* be headed, it doesn't have as much relavance to today's world,
I think...And, also, IMHO there's not that much scary about Max
Headroom...If one finds HeadroomEarth scary, than one would have to
find Bladerunner scary, and Chiba City scary since they're practically
the same - same amount of apathy in terms of political concern....

|--
|Jeremy_Reimer@ |"Anti-ninjas were the most feared assassins in the world.
|mindlink.bc.ca | Instead of appearing out of thin air, throwing metal stars
|---------------| and messing around with bo staffs and numchuks they simply
|aka THE JAGUAR!| shot people and then drove everyone mad with pointless
|---------------| conspiracy theories for years afterwards."
|Stealth Sig#42 |  --From "N-Man #3"

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