The All-Seeing Eye in the Sky is watching you, thanks to satellites, wiretaps and “trusted” computers. Or maybe superheroes can hear your every murmur from their private satellite. Feeling paranoid yet? Then you’re just in the right frame of mind for Diet Soap, a new zine that aims to channel the wacked-out writing of Philip K. Dick. The first issue is all about surveillance, and it’ll leave you rattled.
In Tim Pratt’s “Observer Effects,” an all-seeing superhero decides it’s only fair if everybody else can be a universal voyeur too. In Darin C. Bradley’s “the basement, Borges,” a bank-robber and mass murderer watches the security-cam footage with the teller he killed and resurrected. But it’s worth reading DS #1 just for the essays, including co-editor Doug Lain’s discussion of whether exhibition is the only sane response to universal surveillance. And Surveillance Camera Players member Bill Brown writes a history of camera surveillance — which began in 1913 with suffragettes in a London prison. Diet Soap #1 is a must-read for anyone worried about all those eyes and ears on us.
Diet Soap #1 [DietSoap.org]
