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Andrew Brown's avatar

There is also the human face of technocracy, wonderfully portrayed in Pohl and Kornbluth's "Gladiator at Law":

“Not that it matters to Us Engineers. Don’t think I take it personally just because I happen to be essential to the happiness and comfort of everybody in the city. No, Norvie, We Engineers don’t expect a word of thanks. We Engineers work because there’s a job to do, and we’re trained for it. But that doesn’t alter the fact that people are lousy ingrates.”

"At which point Norvie would cock his head a little in the nervous reflex he had acquired with the hearing aid and agree: “Of course, Arnie. Hell, fifty years ago when the first bubble-cities went up women used to burst out crying when they got a look at one. My mother did. Coming out of Belly Rave, knowing she’d never have to go back—she says she bawled like a baby when the domes came in sight.”

And Arnie: “Yeah. Not that that’s evidence, as We Engineers understand evidence. It’s just your untrained recollection of what an untrained woman told you. But it gives you an idea of how those lousy ingrates settled down and got smug. They’d change their tune damn fast if We Engineers weren’t on the job. But you’re an artist, Norvell. You can’t be expected to understand.” And he would gloomily drink beer."

... and so on, until 100 pages later Norvie beats him up.

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Stephen Saperstein Frug's avatar

There is a certain irony here, as one of the initial motivations for cyberpunk was the sense that the consensus future of mid-20th century SF was played out and they needed to develop new images of the future (which I presume is why Gibson was writing "The Gernsback Continuum"). The gritty, computer-dominated futures were very different from Asimov and Heinlein. But as it developed, the two merged, and created a consensus-future-just-with-AI-driving-it-instead-of-nuclear-power, and now we're back where we were forty-five years ago.

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