Thread by @AlexandraErin

Fritz Leiber wrote a sci-fi story called The Silver Eggheads a future where an "author" was a hyped-up celebrity who operated a machine that generated "word whooze", text calculated for maximum emotional effect, addicting readers who retained no memory of what it said.

https://twitter.com/otherhappyplace/status/1666965841756266498

There were only so many of the machines because each one had been patterned after the brain of an actual author Once Upon A Time, and no one knew how to make new ones plus there were no experienced authors around to copy. (This was the 1960s, so it was a very analog future.)

The authors rebelled and smashed the machines so they could unchain their own creativity, all except for the viewpoint character who quite enjoyed a cozy life of collecting royalties and accolades for doing George Jetson's job and couldn't understand why anyone wouldn't.

To be clear, Leiber (widely suspected of being an author him) wasn't presenting this guy's viewpoint as correct, he more just needed a bewildered witness to the proceedings for expository purposes.

Also, there was a lot of weird fetish stuff in there, because it was the 1960s and it was hard to get science fiction published except by soft core pornographers who needed something to stand in for "the articles" in "I just read it for the articles".

The story wrapped up at the end with a very esoterically happy ending where writing became art again instead of automation, and I don't know if I could say decades later what I think the point of it all was. The fetishy stuff made a deeper impression on me, reading it as a kid.

But the concept of "word whooze"... hypnotic strings of phrases that have the shape of coherence without being coherent, that your mind insists must have meaning, but which means nothing... is one I keep finding applicable to modern life.