Dear livejournal genie

[lapsedmodernist]

For my intro class I am teaching a unit on advertising today. I know there must be a good short sci-fi story that deals with advertising. In fact, I remember reading one at some point, about a world so hypersaturated with advertisements that people have to pay a lot of money to be able to stay in a quiet room where there are no ads, and it becomes like an addiction...but I can't remember who wrote it. Does anyone know what I am talking about or have any other suggestions?

Comments

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

oh yeah, that's right. I wonder if I could find that clip to show in class. I was also thinking of giving them an excerpt from "Jennifer Government" to read, but since it's so plot-based, I don't know how an excerpt would work.

[bromius.livejournal.com]

There's an episode of Futurama dealing with the prevalence of advertising. After experiencing a dream that was obviously an ad for a brand of briefs, the main character (a 20th century guy transplanted to the 30th century) learns that in the future companies beam ads into your head using radiation. He complains: "Well sure there were ads in the 20th century, only they were on TV and radio...and in newspapers and magazines... and on t-shirts, on the sides of buses, and on bananas...and written in the sky. But not in dreams! No way!"

Perhaps this is helpful, perhaps not.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Right, I was thinking about that, but it's the same problem as with Jennifer Government, that actually deals with that a lot more explicitly (although is an inferior book), but I want something I can assign as reading before discussion section on Thursday. Also they really can't grasp postmodernism, I don't think Snow Crash would go over very well. I mean, I don't think they are ready to go down the rabbit hole with Hiro Protagonist.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Both too long and too hard to find for your class, but if you can ever track it down, THE SPACE MERCHANTS by Pohl and Kornbluth was written fifty years ago and was sixty years ahead of its time.

Neal Stephenson's short story "Hack The Spew", maybe. Have only vague memories of it.

[zleetle.livejournal.com]

oh, that's one of my favorite books ever... and probably the main reason I study psychological effects of media now :)

Hard to pick one short bit of it to show an intro class, though that was the first book that came to my mind as well.

[twotoedsloth.livejournal.com]

Hey, watchu doing this week?

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

hey, teaching today, W and Th (only one class on Th) and hanging out with you if you are in Boston? Are you in Boston?

[twotoedsloth.livejournal.com]

I am indeed.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

do you still have my telephone number? It's still my NYC cell. how long are you around for/where are you staying?

[twotoedsloth.livejournal.com]

I'm at my brother's in Arlington until next Sunday. If I can get my old cell phone to turn on, I will have your number. If not... do you have my email?

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

did you get it?

The Girl with the Hungry Eyes

[dfordoom.livejournal.com]

You'd probably have to define sci-fi very widely to include this one, but Fritz Leiber's wonderful story The Girl with the Hungry Eyes involves advertising. I think it's the best thing he ever wrote.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

I wonder if some of the Cory Doctorow/Charles Stross post-singularity stuff might be relevant. Advertising and spimes blend seamlessly into advertising and biowar. Here's their jointly-authored short story "Jury Service". It's hard to tell the difference beween viral marketing and designer infections...

Also, Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan, which includes similar ideas. Advertising is everywhere and has gone feral in many places.

Finally -- in a more media-oriented way, and a little more earnest-white-male-radical wish-fulfillment too, is Brian Wood's Channel Zero comics, about a guerilla media resistance in a 1984 future. All the radical kick-assery of the plumber from Brazil with less humor and slightly updated attitudes towards media.

But I kid -- Channel Zero is pretty good, but I wish it could take itself less seriously.

dunno if this is anything interesting for your class, but I had fun putting the list together!

merchants of venus

[cos]

It may or may not be the book you're describing, but it reminds me of The Space Merchants by Frederick Pohl. Set in a world where corporations overtook governments and advertising is the dominant profession of the elite classes and the main outlet for art and culture. The main character ends up being put in charge of a campaign to sell the colonization of Venus to common folk. I don't know how you are about spoilers so I won't say some of the things that would surely identify the book, in case you haven't read it. Except to mention Chicken Little.

There's a sequel called Merchants of Venus, and there may be another in the series but I only read those two.

Re: merchants of venus

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

cool, thanks! I imagine it's too long for a class assignment, but it sounds like something I'd want to read recreationally.

Re: merchants of venus

[cos]

IIRC it was a fairly quick read. But it's definitely a book, not a short story. So, depends on what sort of class, what sort of assignment.

[slanderous.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you're thinking of Feed, by M.T. Anderson, which is a young adult novel about a future in which we are fed, through some neurological thingamabob, a constant stream of specialized advertising.

Here's the blurb (lifted from Amazon) from Publishers' Weekly:

In this chilling novel, Anderson (Burger Wuss; Thirsty) imagines a society dominated by the feed a next-generation Internet/television hybrid that is directly hardwired into the brain. Teen narrator Titus never questions his world, in which parents select their babies' attributes in the conceptionarium, corporations dominate the information stream, and kids learn to employ the feed more efficiently in School. But everything changes when he and his pals travel to the moon for spring break. There Titus meets home-schooled Violet, who thinks for herself, searches out news and asserts that "Everything we've grown up with the stories on the feed, the games, all of that it's all streamlining our personalities so we're easier to sell to." Without exposition, Anderson deftly combines elements of today's teen scene, including parties and shopping malls, with imaginative and disturbing fantasy twists. "Chats" flow privately from mind to mind; Titus flies an "upcar"; people go "mal" (short for "malfunctioning") in contraband sites that intoxicate by scrambling the feed; and, after Titus and his friends develop lesions, banner ads and sit-coms dub the lesions the newest hot trend, causing one friend to commission a fake one and another to outdo her by getting cuts all over her body. Excerpts from the feed at the close of each chapter demonstrate the blinding barrage of entertainment and temptations for conspicuous consumption. Titus proves a believably flawed hero, and ultimately the novel's greatest strength lies in his denial of and uncomfortable awakening to the truth. This satire offers a thought-provoking and scathing indictment that may prod readers to examine the more sinister possibilities of corporate- and media-dominated culture.