There seemed to be several meetings in this room superimposed on one another, and they cannot be sorted out. To sort them out would have been to destroy their effect, however, for they achieved syntheses of their several aspects and became the true meeting that never really took place but which contained all the other meetings in one theatrical unity.
> ..On first read, yes, it’s nonsense, but this is the experience of experiencing Lafferty. He doesn’t make any sense, until you decide, and you must decide, that he does. Then, suddenly, he becomes a genius. Read the paragraph again. What’s he talking about? Today, you might realize he’s predicting Zoom: a main meeting full of individual nonmeetings taking place in chats and side slacks that together constitute a constant and overarching supermeeting! Tomorrow, it’ll sound like something else entirely.
R.A. Lafferty, from “Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteen Seventies” (1978), an alternate history of television, https://www.wired.com/story/who-is-r-a-lafferty-best-sci-fi-...
> ..On first read, yes, it’s nonsense, but this is the experience of experiencing Lafferty. He doesn’t make any sense, until you decide, and you must decide, that he does. Then, suddenly, he becomes a genius. Read the paragraph again. What’s he talking about? Today, you might realize he’s predicting Zoom: a main meeting full of individual nonmeetings taking place in chats and side slacks that together constitute a constant and overarching supermeeting! Tomorrow, it’ll sound like something else entirely.