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Post by sadako on Nov 14, 2023 16:30:22 GMT
Hugely enjoyed Charles Eric Maine’s The Man Who Couldn’t Sleep (US title), aka Escapement (original UK title). The central plot device is a “psychotape” that can record thoughts and emotions, then play them back to someone else. This of course predates the movies Brainstorm and Strange Days… Published as Escapement in the UK in 1956, it also predates JG Ballard’s short story Escapement, but misuses the word as meaning 'an escape from reality'. The novel anticipates IMAX theatres with its "Cinesphere" arenas where vertical seating and huge spherical 3D screens deliver “virtually a reality”! A phrase that jumped out of the page at me! The book gets very violent, very private eye noir, with a twisty plot and femme fatales. The psychotape technology is developed (in Hollywood) with a Cronenbergian cult belief system behind it, where our fantasy lives are our “unlife”. The plot also threatened to veer into Videodrome territory too. The industrialist/innovator Zakon, who envisages the addictive nature of this new technology, has a wonderful rant where he sets out how he will make his fortune off the human desire for "the abandonment of life in favour of dreams". It turns out he's also keen to quell the population explosion... I was pretty startled by how violent this was, presumably aiming for the US market, but also how well it analysed and weaponised escapism. Easily the best Maine I've read so far, and not the only story of his to be filmed. The 1958 movie version of Escapement, scripted by Maine himself, reduces the huge concepts very boringly into a purely psychiatric device, being investigated by a new character, a very dull insurance man. The scientist/protagonist of the novel (the titular man who can't sleep) is demoted to a minor role. It was released as Escapement in the UK and as The Electronic Monster in the US. After seeing it, a modest Merton Park Studios B-movie, I had very low expectations of the novel! Though I'd hunted high and low for a copy as I'm (sort of) collecting Maine's works. It's only ever been published in hardback and I only found a reasonably priced copy in Downtown LA!
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