@RUTGERS.ARPA:jpa144@cit-vax (03/28/85)
From: jpa144@cit-vax (Jens Peter Alfke) There has been some discussion (started by "Brainstorm", a movie which I must confess I haven't seen) about recording/transmission of human thoughts, and about stories concerning the same. Here are a few that I remember: "The Duelling Machine" by Ben Bova. Set in a far-future galactic empire, this is about a machine which projects two "players" into a fantasy land- scape created by computer. The players can do anything to each other in the game, which ends when one surrenders. It is intended to be used as a means to peacefully settle disputes, but various nasties find ways to do unpleasant things with it. "The Mueller-Fokker Effect" by John Sladek. A very very strange book, stylistically similar to the /Illuminatus/ series, which concerns, among a few dozen other plots, a man who "volunteers" for a government experiment which transfers his personality and memories to magnetic tape, after which his body is accidentally destroyed. It turns out, though, that his "soul" attains consciousness of a sort while in the tape . . . [I believe this one is out of print. Too bad. Does anyone know if it's still around, or if Sladek wrote anything else besides this and /The Best of John Sladek/ ??] A book whose title escapes me, by D.G. Compton, which strikes me as being *very* similar to what I've heard about Brainstorm, about a small company which develops an "experience-recording" device. As I recall, one of the things that they made tapes of was a sex act (with partners solicited by personal ads), and the machines were eventually sold, along with tapes. The novels "A World Out Of Time" and "Integral Trees" by Larry Niven also use the idea of putting a human's personality into a computer, as does his Berserker story, "A Teardrop Falls" (in /Limits/). John Varley's future history also has people's minds being recoded (on "Ferro- Photo-Nucleic Acid") and played into clones upon the original body's death. Also see the movie "Dreamscape". Whee! There must be dozens more stories on this theme . . . --Peter Alfke "I can't think of an amusing quote to put here."
dwight@timeinc.UUCP (Dwight Ernest) (03/28/85)
Yes, there are dozens more stories on this topic of memory recording, including Silvertberg's "Majipoor Chronicles." Highly recommended.
rick@rochester.UUCP (03/28/85)
From: Rick Floyd <rick> >From: jpa144@cit-vax (Jens Peter Alfke) ... > Does anyone > know if it's still around, or if Sladek wrote anything else besides > this and /The Best of John Sladek/ ??] > John Sladek also wrote "The Reproductive System" (originally "Mechasm"). An improbable and wildly bizarre novel about machine intelligence (in the form of little self-reproducing boxes) gone wild. Very heavy on satire. The sequence about the little boxes gutting Las Vegas and the discussion of possible military retaliation is particularly biting. I would recommend it highly if it weren't out of print. The author blurb in the '74 edition of "The Reproductive System" states: "John T. Sladek was born in Iowa in 1937. He studied mechanical engineering, then English literature and composition at the University of Minnesota; he says he "writes passable technical manuals" and that his first published work was "The Baker Forklift Truck". "Sladek has contributed to Playboy, Ambit, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, Galaxy and New Worlds, and he is the Editor of Ronald Reagan, The Magazine of Poetry. "The Reproductive System" is his first novel." Does anyone know where I can get a copy of "The Baker Forklift Truck"? rick floyd rick@rochester.ARPA seismo!rochester!rick
mercury@ut-ngp.UUCP (Larry E. Baker) (03/29/85)
[...] > The novels "A World Out Of Time" and "Integral Trees" by Larry Niven also use > the idea of putting a human's personality into a computer, as does > his Berserker story, "A Teardrop Falls" (in /Limits/). There is also an excellent collection, written in collaboration with several authors, called _Berserker_Base_. Highly recommended, particurlaly if you liked "A Teardrop Falls," as it is essentially a novel-like continuation of that story. (I say novel-like because it dosen't seem to have the coherency that a ``book'' has, but it has the length) -- - Larry Baker @ The University of Texas at Austin - ...{seismo!ut-sally | decvax!allegra | tektronix!ihnp4}!ut-ngp!mercury