Odds are that you've either seen this movie yourselves of know someone who has, so now we're going to examine the next logical step in this form of entertainment: psionic linkage! That is, the audience not only gets to watch Truman live his life, they would also be able to share his thoughts and experience his feelings. We begin with a vignette from the Issac Asimov/Groff Conklin anthology, 50 Great Short SF Stories. I don't remember its title or the author, but is was a first-person anecdote about the early days of such technology. The narrator was attending the Hollywood premiere of the very first move of this type: male viewers are handed glasses which attune them to the hero, and females to the leading lady. The narrator found himself sitting behind the two stars, and saw them leaning close together: he tells the gossip columnist that they were trading glasses. Kate Wilhelm: Baby, You Were Great: Perhaps the ultimate cable experience, and a real bargain at only $50/year. 37 million subscribers can plug into the life of Anne Beaument: 8 hours per day of live programming, followed by another 8 hours of tapes. The problem: she want to quit transmitting and go back to living her life for herself again. Orson Scott Card, Lifeloop. Time: the distant future. Place: the planet Capitol. Arran Handully, the highest-paid actress is history, has 100 billion fans throughout the galaxy, but she can't be herself while the loop is be recorded. Ed Bryant, The Poet in the Hologram in the Middle of Prime Time; Back to Earth: Greater Ellay, early January 2020. The emphasis switches from actress to a poet named Ransom, who reluctantly supports himself by writing scripts for holovision. He decides to make a last stand against commercialism, only to discover that his intended act of defiance was really just another media event: he'd been manipulated into becoming a performer. Up to now, the stories mentioned here are mostly useful for fleshing out certain aspects of a cypberpunk-type setting, but all that's about to change... Dean R. Koontz, The Fall of the Dream Machine. You many know him for his horror novels, but he started out as a SF writer. This example is inspired by the works of one Marshall McLuhan, but there's a touch of Citizen Kane here as well. The year is 2181; Show's got just a form of entertainment for its half billion subscribers ($300/year), it's a way of life. Show was created in 1991 by Anaxemander Cockley, who's still alive and running most of the world. He harvests organs to prolong his own existence. Cockley rules a world of household robots, a declining birthrate in the civilized nations, the end of all other media (books, magazines, newspapers, movies, TV), subliminal advertising, the Empathists (people who slip into catatonic trances while tuning into Show (the rate is up to 15,000 cases per year, and a Media Revolution being spearheaded by the current President of the United States, an office with little power in any official capacity). Tales of related interest Robert Sheckley, The Never-Ending Western Movie. The title is self-explanatory. However, the actors use real guns and ammunition, so they can (and do!) get killed. Alex Kirs, Better Than Ever: The Movie is a month-long experience which changes your whole life forever. Women come out haggard and viciously serene; men look calm, dedicated and noble. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World: remember the feelies? Back to White Knight #10 Table of Contents Back to White Knight List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Pegasus-Unicorn Productions This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com