retirement than he ever could in the White House.
President Nixon:
Who can forget the spontaneous demonstrations of loyalty that erupted throughout the country in 1968, as the presidential campaign took on the good-humoured air of a festival? In Chicago, the Democratic Convention was invaded by pranksters of the 'Why Bother?' faction, encouraging delegates not to tinker with success and admit that the party of opposition could not hope to compete with the administration.
Even losing candidate Hubert Humphrey, polling proportionately fewer votes than any second-placer in history, was able to laugh off defeat with an admission that he didn't envy Barry Goldwater the job of following a fighting Quaker saint in the White House.
That year, John Kennedy, the forgotten man of American politics, remarried, not to the blonde goddess whose wiles had ruined his chance for the presidency in 1960, but to Mia Farrow, youthful star of the summer's heart- warming hit motion picture,
Amid the hilarity and fellow-feeling, one should remember Nixon the Statesman. The triumphs of the Nixon Presidency were epitomised by his swift intervention in Cuba in 1962, providing air support for democratic rebels who overthrew the short-lived regime of the mad tyrant, Fidel Castro. Here we see American offshore interests triumphant in 1963 as businessman Samuel Giancana reopens the Club Whoopee, Havana. That noise you hear has been identified as the happy popping of champagne corks.
Also, Secretary of State Hoffa presided over the removal of many restrictions which threatened to impede the progress of American industry, granting rich government contracts to the technocrats who steadfastly worked in the space programme. Here, reactionary Ralph Nader slinks away from a congressional committee after the decisive defeat of his Slow Down Emissions recommendations, which would have cut American output by up to 50 per cent.
After deliberating the findings of a committee chaired by Governor George Wallace, the president adopted the policy of Separate But Equal Development in education, housing and employment, ensuring unprecedented racial harmony in the South. The amusing shoeshine boy seen here 'accidentally' spilling polish over Governor George's white pants-cuffs has been identified as a Mr Malcolm Little, who seems, quite sensibly to judge by that grumpy look on George's face, to have disappeared from history soon after this candid footage was shot.
In 1961, everyone went to the movies and saw Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood in
THE BOOK OF MEAT
I
Canyon de Chelly stuck its stone finger up at the dusk like a taffy stretched Stonehenge megalith. The free- standing rock tower was a defiant sport. In a million years, wind had created the majestical feature. In a mere minute, the Knock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots would bring the untidy thing down. It was an anomaly and anomalies were intolerable.
Franken Steinberg stood by the bus, recharging as Olympia busied herself with Blastite. Jump-leads connected his neck-bolts with the generator. Kochineel monitored, triple-belled cap nodding over the dials. Juice flowed into the capacitators under Franken's clavicles. He could function for a day on less than five cents' worth of electricity.
Considering Canyon de Chelly, Franken found himself questioning the dictum that nature was random and chaotic. The column was so contrived, so perfect that, like his own mainly mechanical body, it bespoke the existence of a creator.
It might be God's colophon, a declaration of copyright and ownership.
The thought was surplus to the cybermind. He made an effort to burn it from his graymass. When his meatmind consciousness transferred to a more efficient storage vessel, unfruitful byways would be shut off. He longed to achieve true machine state.
He had abraded the GenTech logo from his plaskin face but the symbols persisted inside, a sub-microscopic rash on the robo-bits scattered through his altered body. Retaining memory of his half-life before BioDiv got to work on him, he did not (like more superstitious cyborgs) regard Dr Zarathustra as a God. He had been created equal with meatkind; GenTech BioDiv, for its own reasons, helped him evolve towards perfection.
Towards perfection. That was the path of the 'bots.
He was not personally involved in Olympia's special project, but he observed her preparations with interest and admiration. Olympia was a good machine, if overinclined to special effects. Having run calculations through the chipped portion of her graymass, she had determined the exact charge necessary to fell the pillar. Flitting around the pillar on her points, she chattered instructions to Pinocchiocchio, who hulked along after her like a drone, placing the Blastite as ordered.
Olympia hated inefficiency and freaks of nature. It was not enough that meatfolks become machine, the Earth must be covered over with plastic and durium. Gaia, the sentimental personification of the living planet, must become a cyborg, in symbiosis with its machines. That was how machinekind should greet the millennium.
This current demolition was undertaken aesthetically. The cybermind could create art. It was empirically provable.
Robbie the Robotman and Hymie the Android knelt facing each other over an imaginary chessboard, indicating
