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Monday, April 24, 2006

Punks, Pre-Cogged

Last night in my typical Sunday night insomnia, I got down from the bookshelf the egregiously misfiled Nightmare Age, which has been in my Earth Mysteries section for a couple of years due to some lackadaisical flaw on my part. The book, published in 1970 and edited by Frederick Pohl, is an anthology of eco-catastrophe stories culled from 1960s science fiction mags. (It wasn't until a while later I realized it was the waning hours of Earth Day.) (Hit Read more! below) I read one story in there last night, "Day of Truce," by Clifford D. Simak. It concerned a future suburbia in which the subdivisions are veritable fortresses. The suburbanites must daily battle a group of youthful outsiders called--get this--The Punks.
I laughed when I saw that.
The story was published in 1963 in the February issue of Galaxy, beating the "nihilistic" real-life subculture by more than a decade. I wonder if Richard Hell had read this story. "Day of Truce" describes how The Punks started out as your run-of-the-mill suburban vandals and eventually became the force that threatened to bring down all of society, as the Sex Pistols threatened in 1977.
(Check out the movie Suburbia, as well.)
I recall there's also a scene in Philip K. Dick's Time Out of Joint (1959) that seems to describe 1970s-era punks. I'll look it up tonight and get back to you...

2 Comments:

Blogger X. Dell said...

This site cites Fort as the basis of this trend, and then notes a revival during the 1960s. Yet I know of Nazi efforts at such disciplines as archeoastronomy--the study of futuristic artifacts in ancient civilizations that might have come from extraterrestrial visitors. The article didn't mention this, but it might be good to look into some day.

7:32 PM  
Blogger Suki said...

That's cool! But there's no mention of it here though:
http://www.dkrenton.co.uk/punk_history.html

I think it's interesting how people around the world think about the same things and use the same words at the same time unbeknownst to each other (think about atoms).

12:06 PM  

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