All these shows -- Cameras on Cops is big-time show-biz... Already in the science fiction world where there's an Ultraviolence Channel. Not quite yet... but Ch. 21, 27 or 33, in the evening, you'll get one of the cop or rescue shows, which means the video camera strapped to the helmet -- "And, "Go on in there after 'em boys," kicking doors down, hauling drug dealers out of bed, and breaking up poebucker family fights, and all that... they're working on that sci fi ultraviolence channel. Like in THX 1138 and Clockwork Orange and World of the Future. I've been reading too many science fiction books. I've read 4 or 5 in a row now that were written about 5 or 10 years ago and are supposed to depict NOW, the 1990s... and the horrible thing is, they DO depict NOW. And they're supposed to be SCARY!! The reader is supposed to react with disgust and dread. And instead you just kind of go, "Hmmm... well, gosh, he was right. Funny, now that it's all happening it just seems kind of... NORMAL."
END OF THE WORLD NEWS by Anthony Burges and also THE WANTING SEED by him... Children of the Thunder by John Brunner... and also his Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up... What else, Nature's End by Whitley Streiber... and War Day by him...
I end up saying to myself, "Yeah, well, I know this is supposed to be a dystopian science fiction warning about the perils to come if we continue... and we DID continue, and now we're right in the middle of those perils to come, and we're USED to 'em. There IS a terrible ecological or human disaster on the news EVERY DAY... SEVERAL every day. And thousands of new laws designed to cramp your personal freedoms bit by bit so you don't even notice when they're all gone... it comes off as boring current events, or at best a tachno-thriller sort of setting, but it's SUPPOSED to be terrifying sci fi of awful things that JUST MIGHT POSSIBLY COME TRUE were the human race STUPID enough to LET them even after reading THOSE sci-fi books!!! Dobbs as a hobby writes sci-fi about the near future... does that mean the absurd baloney he comes up with, thinking, "Ah, this'is so funny and satirical but grisly and scary at the same time, haha ha..." MAN...? What if the Yacatisma DO get here before the XISTS??
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