Story Review Larry Niven Flash Crowd
A prophetic Gem of a novella predicting much that we now see and take for granted in the 21st century.
Science fiction novella review – LARRY NIVEN – FLASH CROWD 1973 The Mammoth Book Of Short Science Fiction Novels.
A brilliant story that seems very prophetic of the 21st century Internet, e-mail and mobile phone phenomena called flash mobbing.
In Niven’s vision of the late 1990’s it isn’t the internet that draws crowds together rapidly for organized blitzkrieg arrival and dispersal, but teleportation chambers. The jaunt tube has become a universal means of getting around enabling people to simply phone them to any place on Earth. Roads and airports have become devoid of conventional traffic. Goods are transported by booth, pollution dumped on Venus by long-range booths.
Crime has changed but not gone away, but rioting seems to have become a thing of the past until a shopping mall becomes the location of chaotic scenes of violence, looting, etc.
A reporter, known as a newstaper, the rather daftly named Jerryberry, finds himself caught in the midst of a small riot, and transmits live footage of it to his TV network studio. The footage inflames the riot as more and more people phone themselves in to gain publicity, steal, and worse.
Jerryberry finds himself accountable for a crisis he feels he was just reporting, and the story balances neatly between his campaign for press and broadcasting freedom, and an objective evaluation of the pros and cons of a World transformed by its teleportation booths, where people and information travel at virtually the same pace.
Powerful, and somehow more relevant today than when the story first went to press.
Arthur Chappell
Liked it
