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Day Million: A Good Ideas

1392 Words6 Pages

Humans Are…?
As time goes on, civilizations rise and fall. With each one comes a society built upon the cultures of the earlier ones, picking them apart and warping them into something entirely new. What is popular today will be primitive to people thousands of years in the future, just as societies as far back as the Roman Empire are to people of the modern world. Ideas, even the definition of what it means to be human, warp with time as well. The author Frederick Pohl comments on this in his short story “Day Million”, by addressing the technology, consumerist lifestyle and social issues of the 1960’s.
First of all, there are the technological advancements of the time. The 1960’s was a huge decade in this regard. For one, the genetic code …show more content…

American society lives by the second. People want more and more, faster and faster. People are able to get want they want, when they want it. In “Day Million”, this is seen through the virtual reality devices. As on page 384, at any point Don would like to see Dora, he would just need to press a button and she’d be there, exclusively for him, just as he is for her and other women like Dora are for him and so on. In some sense, it sounds like picking out an outfit. One day, a person may want to wear jeans and a t-shirt, and on others a hat and a jacket would do nicely. In another sense, it is like a classic life-simulation game. Don can choose a “character”, such as Dora, and have her “symbolic-mathematics stay true to her while enabling him to do whatever he wants with her when he wants to. There is no necessary commitment to this type of relationship. This idea reflects the source the short story was originally published in and its audience; Rogue magazine. There is a sense of control with pornography. Just as with Don and Dora and their “symbolic-mathematics” of each other, a reader is able to choose from a variety of imagery all dependent on their preference. In fact, much of what drives the story is the author’s comments towards his audience—typically conservative, male “swingers”. Many may scoff at the society of “Day Million”, yet it reflects what people do

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