title: Subliminal Communication: Emperor's Clothes or Panacea?: With How to Create Your Own Subliminal Program
author:  Eldon Taylor 
description: Salt Lake City, UT, 1988. Second Revised Edition. x,125pp. with Appendices and Bibliography.
zlib_text: 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  J. G. BALLARD
  
  
  The Subliminal Man
  
  
  J. G. Ballard is a British writer who has been called a "poet of death." But
  Ballard, especially in the early part of his career, also wrote excellent
  extrapolative science fiction on social themes, and this haunting story is one
  of his finest.
  
  
  Here Ballard speaks of the enslavement of the unconscious, of an economic
  system that forces people to consume against their will through the use of
  technology. Ballard makes an important assumption-the belief (at least
  implicitly) that people would not want to consume at high rates if they were
  not "forced'' to do so. In a profound sense, "The Subliminal Man" is a basic
  critique of the underlying dichotomy that pervades the concept of advertising-
  that of needs versus wants. We all have basic needs like food, sex, clothing,
  and shelter. Almost everything else (including the book you are now reading)
  is wants, often artificially created by the culture in which we live. Think
  how much more 