Posted on 04/12/2007 10:53:09 AM PDT by pjd
The following is an old story (1974) but probably not very well-known. I came upon it recently, by chance, because of the upcoming release of the new movie 'Next' which is based on a Philip K. Dick short story called 'The Golden Man'.
Although I'm a big fan of PKD, I had not read The Golden Man and wanted to check it out before the movie opened. The few collections of PKD short stories I have did not contain The Golden Man, so I found a collection entitled The Golden Man that was published in 1980. This collection, of course, contained The Golden Man Shortstory.
Ok. where am I going with this?
At the end of the book, there are 'Story Notes' by Dick. One of the stories in the collection is called 'The Pre-Persons' and Dick presented this note in regard to that story:
"The Pre-Persons"
In this, the most recent of the stories in this collection, I incurred the absolute hate of Joanna Russ who wrote me the nastiest letter I've ever received; at one point she said she usually offered to beat up people (she didn't use the word "people") who expressed opinions such as this. I admit that this story amounts to special pleading, and I am sorry to offend those who disagree with me about abortion on demand. I also got some unsigned hate mail, some of it not from individuals but from organizations promoting abortion on demand. Well, I have always managed to offend people by what I write. Drugs, communism, and now an anti-abortion stand; I really know how to get myself into hot water. Sorry, people. But for the pre-persons' sake I am not sorry. I stand where I stand: "Hier steh' Ich; Ich kann nicht anders," as martin Luther is supposed to have said.
Of course, I can't reprint the story for you here, but I can tell you a little bit about the plot. The main foundation of the story is based on the arbitrariness of when a person becomes a person. Failing to see the difference between a person being inside the womb or outside opens up an unavoidable question. Since that choice is arbitrary, why not make it earlier or why not make it later. In this story, Congress decided that personhood should be a function of cognitive ability. They decided that the ability to do algebra was a reasonable test for cognitive ability and eventually set the age limit for postpartum abortion at 13 years.
Abortion trucks would be seen crusing through the neighborhoods, looking for strays (children under 13 without the proper 'We want our child' papers, or making special pick-ups to households where parent's decided they didn't want their children anymore.
I won't tell you any more, so as not to spoil the story, but it is a rather incredible story by one of my favorite sci-fi authors.
Thanks. I have often cited this story in my responses to FR abortion threads. It’s powerful.
Nomating this thread for Best Vanity of the Year
You must read the wrong science fiction authors. Most I’m familiar with are libertarian, some are quite apolitical.
I used to be a HUGE Philip K. Dick fan back in the 80’s. I read everything that he wrote that I could get my hands on. It is interesting to see that Hollywood is now making film after film based upon his novels and short stories. Except that Hollywood rarely gets or trys to make the point his stories were trying to make. They warp most of them into something different than what was intended by Dick.
Try reading the Star Faction by Ken MacLeod and the other books in the series. Good Sci Fi with great political speculations to boot.
I’m a huge PKD fan and love McLeod also so maybe others will too?
I bought the Philip K Dick Reader which has this story. He also hates “robots” as evident in “Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep (novel), which was the bases for “Blade Runner” and the short-story “To Serve a Master”.
“Second Variety” - Movie Screamers
“The Minority Report” - Movie Minority Report.
“For wholesale you can Remember it” - Movie Total Recall.
Yeah, I’ve read the story. It’s a good one. It’s also in The Eye of The Sibyl and Other Classic Stories (The Collected Short Stories of Philip K. Dick, Vol. 5). PKD was an incredible genius.
regards,
anti-abortion ping to Narses.
Would you please ping you anti-abortion ping list here?
Thanks.
I agree.
BTW, I can never remember whether the noun is spelled Nomato or Nomatoe. ;)
Singer from Princeton U. has argued on behalf of mothers being able to decide whether to abort their children for up to 3 weeks after birth.
In England, a woman cannot be charged with homicide for killing her children within their first year after birth. She can only be charged with manslaughter because she isn’t fully responsible because of all the difficulties surrounding birth, motherhood, etc. How that changes the nature of a particularly heinous crime such that the English adopt it into their legal code is answered by the logical extension of devaluing life.
oh yes, I tell people about this story all the time. many times when I see pro-abortion ladies on TV I see his character who regrets not having a “trophy” for the mantle place.
Philip K. Dick, the greatest American writer of the 20th century. Most important too.
I’ve read about 5 or 6 Phillip K. Dick novels and I loved every one. He put a lot of thought into it.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is actually very funny satire of all the weird little cults prominent in 1960’s CA.
The best adaptation of this story is not Blade Runner but Network. Howard Beal’s “humanoids” are Philip K. Dick’s androids.
Yes. I know he was way into drugs. That is also why he knew what a waste of life they were and why he wrote very strongly against them.
He talks about this very stratghtforwardly in the afterword of A Scanner Darkly.
One of the things it could have been influenced by was the death of his twin sister at birth.
I’m not sure he hated androids, the big quandry of “Sheep” was what makes humans human and how we destroy our innate humanity, which was a recurring theme in his books. As of Scanner Darkly (IMHO the most true adaptation of one of his stories yet) he became the most filmed author out there, most of the movies made from his stories are good though they also tend to miss the point (Total Recall is a good example of that, fun movie, but completely missed the core of the story).
I think Golden Man was inspired (and I think this is explained in the notes at the end of the eponymous story collection) because editors of SF magazines at the time had a rule that mutants had to be portrayed as wise and all knowing and that all mutation was for the betterment of mankind because they were a mutant that had survived mother nature’s test and PKD could envision a situation or a mutation that was survivable and even able to spread it’s DNA but not be intellectually superior like the SF editors demanded.
The Golden Man is a beautiful idiot. Women find him sexually irresistible because of his mutation and he is difficult to catch because his pregog ability but he only really lives to breed indiscriminately and other then procreation, produces does little else.
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