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My only brother, eight years older than I, is a successful scientist. His special field is physics as it relates to clouds. His name is Bernard, and he is funnier than I am.
“Physics as it relates to clouds” = weather control (or at least cloud seeding), as it turns out.
The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.
Rather costly I should say, though.
HARRISON BERGERON
This one (about future where everyone is equal by design and elaborate handicaps) is a good one.
George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn’t be handicapped. But he didn’t get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.
"I think I’d make a good Handicapper General." "Good as anybody else," said George.
One big benefit: no sense having job interviews if everyone is perfectly calibrated and handicapped. ;) save a ton of time, even if productivity would be abysmal
"Ladies and gentlemen—" said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred-pound men.
Darwin’s theory on sexual selection: if an individual can survive with such obvious burdens, they must have strong genes to compensate and thus become an attractive mate. Here, degree of handicap—and thus, intelligence/skill/talent—might still prove advantageous?
"Well," I said, "as long as people have to come along with the machines, I guess we’re all right." "What?" she said. "When machines start delivering themselves," I said, "I guess that’s when the people better start really worrying."
The singularity!
WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE
Antifertility pills remove pleasure from sex, in effort to stabilize population without immorally encouraging sex for nonprocreative purposes. Looks like this one was originally published in Playboy, by the way.
The pills were ethical because they didn’t interfere with a person’s ability to reproduce, which would have been unnatural and immoral. All the pills did was take every bit of pleasure out of sex. Thus did science and morals go hand in hand.
Of course, some people believe that interfering with someone's experience of pleasure out of sex is unethical.
I ate beneath a roof of orange; Swung with progress like a door hinge.
A feat of rhyme with “orange”! :)
ALL THE KING’S HORSES
The horrific chess match story
"We get to watch the game?" whispered the corporal tensely. "The sixteen of us, soldier, are the chessmen I’ll be playing with." The door swung open....
No mortgages, no politics, no war, no work, no worry. Just wag the old tail or lick a hand, and you’re all taken care of.’ " ’Mr. Edison,’ I said, ’do you mean to tell me that dogs are smarter than people?’ " ’Smarter?’ said Edison. ’I’ll tell the world! And what have I been doing for the past year? Slaving to work out a light bulb so dogs can play at night!’
So long and thanks for all the fish--er, kibble?
Since that day, of course, the professor has been systematically destroying the world’s armaments, until there is now little with which to equip an army other than rocks and sharp sticks. His activities haven’t exactly resulted in peace, but have, rather, precipitated a bloodless and entertaining sort of war that might be called the "War of the Tattletales." Every nation is flooded with enemy agents whose sole mission is to locate military equipment, which is promptly wrecked when it is brought to the professor’s attention in the press.
Or they’ll talk about fear, which we used to call politics—job politics, social politics, government politics.
This in 1953, feels even more true today. Though ok, politicizing Cold War, red scare etc.... but pointing out that all of politics comes down to fear is an interesting perspective. Disheartening, but not without truth to it. I guess I’d argue that a fair bit of it is the unquenchable thirst for power (and in the case of Trump, airtime).
