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GAY_APPAREL

                                              August 6, 2005


When I was a teenager, I had a number of science
fictional ideas about likely and/or potential
futures that in retrospect seem pretty good to me.

For example it seemed likely to me that plastic
surgery would continue to get cheaper and more
reliable, and my prediction was that:

 First, everyone would transform
 themselves into clones of the         I was thinking largely about
 hollywood stars of the moment.        facial plastic surgery as I
                                       remember it, and I was
 Secondly, everyone would              envisioning something like
 quickly grow bored of                 a generation of Redfords and
 Hollywood clones, and                 Farrahs.
 decide to transform
 themselves into
 something more unique.

    And then the age of                The actual
    monsters would begin.              train of
                                       events has         We've been
                                       been more          skipping back
                                       complicated        and forth
        That's not a bad               with the           along the
        chain of thought,              strange            timeline I
        if I do say so                 side-jaunt         invented.
        myself, though                 into "modern
        you can't give me              primitives"
        a high score for               territory.
        prophecy.                                      Reality never conforms
                                                       to a unified vision.
        I didn't at all
        anticipate what's
        actually happening:     But I did better with fat
        the use of surgery      removal surgery, later
        and hormone             called "lipposuction":
        treatments to           that seemed like an
        exaggerate              obvious idea to me.
        secondary sexual
        characteristics:

           They're turning
           themselves into      So, why didn't I
           comic book           guess that this
           caricatures of       would happen?
           human beings.
                                             I was certainly
                                             famliar enough      There are
                                             with comic books.   reasons
                                                                 that they
                                    And I knew                   are popular.
                                    something
                                    about hormone                Probably:
                                    treatments as                I took their
                                    well.                        "underground"
                                                                 status too
                              I'd heard about an                 seriously
                              "anti-testosterone"                to follow
                              that would neutralize              this chain.
                              male biological sex
                              drive: I thought that            The difference
                              was interesting.                 between
                                                               Eloi and
                          It took a decade or so               Morlock:
                          for someone to use this              just a thin
                          subject in SF: Bruce                 layer of
                          Sterling has used it                 dirt.
                          several times now.





  Of course, it could
  still turn out that
  I was correct, in
  some sense.

  After the age of the
  comic book physique,
  we may yet see a
  return to individuality...



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