Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our discussion of the short story....

If There Were No Benny Cemoli • (1963) by P.K. Dick

From the anthology The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories by Philip K. Dick. See The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories discussion hub for more info on the anthology and pointers to discussion of its other stories.

One of my least favorites - not sure why. At first I was amused with the New York Times thing, but it fizzled out and getting more complicated but not engaging enough for me to care.

I liked it a lot, although it could have been better at times. I liked PKD's idea of what newspapers would become. I also enjoyed (view spoiler)[yet another made up person who influences the world, like Yancy (hide spoiler)].

I liked this story.

SPOILERS
It's got the usual PKD fakery. In this case the less-powerful but more vested "Relief of War-torn Areas Administrating Council" (RoWTAAC – doesn't actually roll of the the tongue, does it?) thinks they have the official right to reinvigorate the Earth. The far better equipped Centaurus Urban Renewal Bureau (CURB) also has the better acronym. But RoWTAAC has the clever strategy to keep CURB preoccupied with a search for an entirely fictional dissident, leaving all sorts of bread crumbs, freeing them up to do their other work.

Great strategy, pointing to tiny specks of tinfoil as distraction so no one sees what you are really up to.

The concept of the omniscient newspaper was great, even if the tech justification for it was ultra hand-wavey.

(view spoiler)[ By starting out w/the RoWTAAC rep, and then having the CURB leader order him around, I started to sympathize w/RoWTAAC. So the ending surprised me a bit, in a good way (though if the manipulation has been due to some kind of technical/programming error or a newspaper AI, possibilities I was beginning to suspect, that would have been interesting, too). (hide spoiler)]

A tactic of diversion using the media - not a new thing in my country. People get distracted all the times with sensational news items/persons. What's worse is that the media has not held accountable for reporting fabricated news. . Of course creating a whole person takes more efforts but I feel like this story pretty relevant to what happens today. Media as a machine - automated - is not a faraway concept.

Silvana wrote: "Media as a machine - automated - is not a faraway concept. ..."

IBM has been running ads here featuring a pop song that their AI ("Watson") wrote.

I noticed the "homeopape New York Times" reappears in the Stand-By / Ragland park stories.

Silvana wrote: "creating a whole person takes more efforts..."

During World War II, the British ran a disinformation campaign creating a fictional naval officer whose body conveniently washed ashore with plans for an invasion of Greece (intended to divert Nazi forces from the actual invasion of Sicily.) British naval officer Ewen Montagu later wrote a novel based on the events, The Man Who Never Was. (aside: Lt Cmdr Ian Flemming was involved in the operation; he later went on to write a lot of James Bond spy novels. :)

I really enjoyed it but at the same time I felt it'd be better explored as a novella. It just felt a bit rushed - X then Y then Z, and everyone seemed a bit stupider than they should have been as a result.

G33z3r wrote: "Silvana wrote: "Media as a machine - automated - is not a faraway concept. ..."

IBM has been running ads here featuring a pop song that their AI ("Watson") wrote.."

Fun! I thought it was gonna be machine-like, the voice and instrument.

Donald wrote: "I really enjoyed it but at the same time I felt it'd be better explored as a novella. It just felt a bit rushed - X then Y then Z, and everyone seemed a bit stupider than they should have been as a..."

And maybe that's why I did not get the story. I should probably reread.