Hollister has gone to Venus as a UN spy or saboteur. He is an Un-man although not a Rostomily Brother. To fool the narcoquiz, he has been given false memories. Consequently, he feels rage, grief and sorrow for fictional friends or family and thinks anti-UN thoughts until he reminds himself that these memories are not genuine.
"The Big Rain" is primarily about physical and political conditions on Venus. However, Hollister's conditioning adds a psychological aspect. Are his false memories, like Dalgetty's enhanced senses, the work of the Psychotechnic Institute? How much would it be possible to do with a science of the human organism? Taking the idea one stage further, false memories might not just fool a narcoquiz but also give the agent a whole invented biography and personality.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And with some thought I could think of ways a dictatorship could use such an instrument for cementing it's grip on power.
Ad astra! Sean
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