Fantasy for Six Electrodes and One Adrenaline Drip

Haldeman, Joe. "Fantasy for Six Electrodes and One Adrenaline Drip (A Play in the Form of a Feelie Script)." Written 1972 for The Last Dangerous Visions.  2005. First published A Separate War and Other Stories. New York: Ace (hard-back), 2006.

In his "Notes on the Stories," JH says that had The Last Dangerous Visions been published, with this story, "I would have been the Father of Cyberpunk, seven years before William Gibson's 'Johnny Mnemonic.' Or maybe not" (269). Certainly, we have here a workmanlike job on a script for commercial broadcast (or whatever) of a noir narrative of intrigue, torture, sex, and murder among the decadent super-rich. It is significant here, and significant more generally, as a script for a feelie, an art form from decadent civilization in the Brave New World of Aldous Huxley (Clockworks [1], under Fiction). Central to "Fantasy" are the directions for "feelie" effects: tactile and olfactory (cf. scent organ in Huxley's BNW)—and, in an updating of Huxley's inventions, subliminal. (RDE, 25/08/06)