"The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel" -- That is one of the all-time classic opening lines. It is also something people will gradually lose since most people no longer have that grey static.
Worse yet, some generations will misread the symbolism, as my current TV displays a bright blue screen when set to an input that's not in use. This is probably a passing phase, though, as the TVs of the current generation have strange media hubs with crappy builtin apps.
A fan asked Neil Gaiman about it and here's the exchange:
A fan: "You're either paying homage to Gibson, which is weird because the two books are in different genres and he isn't mentioned in the acknowledgements, or perhaps there's some manner of Jungian collective unconscious phenomenon at work here, in which you have unwittingly mimicked Gibson, or..?"
Neil Gaiman: "Or it was a very small joke, essentially pointing out that since what is arguably the most famous opening sentence in SF was published in 1984, the nature of what a "dead channel" looked like had completely changed, from grey static fuzz to a pure dead blue. Well, I thought it was funny, anyway."
Oh God. I can see it now. [Static app] for your TV, purchased by old fogies. Configure Static app to come on when you fall asleep in front of the tv.
Most often purchased with [Off: Vanishing dot], [Stand by mysterious hum], [wired VCR controller (comes with 3 feet of wire)], [bad signal - signal degrades depending on weather]
We already have [Static app] in some devices, which apparently play some sort short video recording of static. So now we get static with DCT compression artifacts.
Similarly, I remember reading a short story (or poem) that I believe was penned sometime in the 1960s. The piece contained a line to the effect of “he had a heart like a telephone”. Now days, people might think that the subject’s heart was easily broken, but it meant just the opposite because those heavy Bell rotary phones were unbelievably durable.
thats a great line. There are all sorts of secondary meanings that could be added by new connections. Yes, easily broken, but also inconstant (dropped calls), easily distracted. This is very much like the whole authorial fallacy. Meaning, in a work of art, is not simply what the author wanted it to mean, but also what the audience took it to mean, and that changes.
Nooooooo! His heart telegraphed all his emotions like a telephone. You always knew what mood he was in because you could "hear" it. Land lines never dropped calls.
We could see that at the terminator, at the boundary between the black part of the moon and the lighted part of the moon. It was as if you were looking at a television set with the contrast turned to full contrast, very black and very white.
silly me is waiting for the day when thin displays can be rolled out to cover walls at affordable prices, then I can set it to static and keep it as a background.
This reminds me of the First Latitudinarian Church of Celebrity Saints, from John Varley's Steel Beach. Their temple features glass tubes in the rounded-rectangle of classic CRTs.
