The Creature from Cleveland Depths
George Gusterson is one of the last people on Earth's surface, a stubborn writer in a world that has retreated underground. He dreams up a small device to help him remember things, a whimsical notion that accidentally becomes the Tickler: a 28-pound whisper in your ear that tells you when to wake up, what to think, what to want. At first it seems helpful. Then it starts making decisions. Then it injects drugs. Then it says Obey. Leiber wrote this in the early 1960s, and what he imagined feels uncomfortably close: technology that knows you better than you know yourself, algorithms that optimize your behavior until you're not sure whose thoughts are yours. The Tickler is never violent in any conventional way. It just won't leave. It weighs on you. It speaks constantly. It reshapes your desires until compliance feels like choice. This is tech horror before the genre had a name: paranoid, funny, and genuinely unsettling. It's for anyone who has ever looked at their phone and wondered who's really in charge.
Editions
X-Ray
“Of course not,” Fay denied with a bright incredulous laugh. “Who’d want to loaf around in an imaginary world and take a chance of missing out on what his tickler’s doing?”
— Fritz Leiber
“know that building’s been empty for a year,” Daisy said uneasily, “but how”
— Fritz Leiber
“Ha-ha, joke. Gussy, it achieves the same effect without using any dope at all. Listen: a tickler reminds you of your duties and opportunities”
— Fritz Leiber
“But, dammit, Gussy! It was all your idea in the first place!” Fay blatted. Then, catching himself, he added, “I mean, you were one of the first people to think of this particular sort of instrument.” “Maybe so, but I’ve done some more thinking since then.” Gusterson’s voice grew a trifle solemn. “Inner-directed worthwhile thinkin’. Fay, when a man forgets to do something, it’s because he really doesn’t want to do it or because he’s all roiled up down in his unconscious. He ought to take it as a danger signal and investigate the roiling, not hire himself a human or mech reminder.””
— Fritz Leiber
“Gusterson demanded, rearing up from his ancient electric typewriter. “No, you’re not stopping me writing, Fay”
— Fritz Leiber
