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Apr. 11th, 2009 07:08 amFriday went by fast. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
inaratalamasca and I attended a Steampunk Fashion Show that was pretty cool. We decided we should come up with some steampunk costumes for next year. We went to another panel on backing up the self, that explored the question of if it could be possible to copy your memories/personality/soul whatever to a computer, backup body, etc., and whether that really meant immortality or was a copy of you really you at all. It was an interesting enough panel but when I brought up two different stories on the subject -- both, in my mind at least, pretty much classic science fiction stories, everyone on the panel looked at me blankly as if they had no idea what I was talking about.
The first story was Phantom of Kansas by John Varley, which involves having your "self" backed up and placed into a clone when you die -- and what happens if a clone of you with a complete backup of your personality gets created while you're still alive. The second story I brought up when they were talking about what kind of a society would arise in a world where you can't be killed, and that was the books Don't Bite the Sun and Drinking Sapphire Wine by Tanieth Lee. Actually at the time I said that I thought they were by C.J. Cherryh, but it hardly mattered because they didn't know what I was talking about anyway.
That just bugged me. Varley's short story is one of his best and a classic treatment of the subject, and Lee's novels are also a classic treatment of the concept of what happens in a society where everything is taken care of for you and you can never die. It's about "the search for meaning in a meaningless world" as one Amazon reviewer wrote.
I wanted to bring up another short story, but I couldn't quite remember the name or the author. It's another female science fiction author like Lee or Cherryh, (probably one of the two, or Joan D. Vinge, or Vonda McIntyre) and it was in a book of short stories called Habitation or something similar to that, and it had a short name like Home or Habitant or something... I forget all of the important details. But I own the book so I can look it up again. It's a very cool story on the idea of life inside and outside a computer, where a ship has crashed on a planet somewhere and many of the crew died, except that none of them really died, because they were "backed up" in the ship's computer. Thus they live and work in a bodiless environment, and the few bodies of those who lived are shared among the entire ship's population, so that everyone is allowed a day or two outside the computer to enjoy being in a physical body again. And the story is about the difference between those two existences, and explores what death might be like.
Anyway it hardly mattered because they wouldn't have known what I was talking about on that one either.
We also saw the movie previews. I think the thing I'm most interested in right now is an Alice In Wonderland movie made by Tim Burton and the project to do the Hobbit as a series of two movies, with Peter Jackson in charge (if the Tolkien estate doesn't block it through legal action.)
inaratalamasca and I attended a Steampunk Fashion Show that was pretty cool. We decided we should come up with some steampunk costumes for next year. We went to another panel on backing up the self, that explored the question of if it could be possible to copy your memories/personality/soul whatever to a computer, backup body, etc., and whether that really meant immortality or was a copy of you really you at all. It was an interesting enough panel but when I brought up two different stories on the subject -- both, in my mind at least, pretty much classic science fiction stories, everyone on the panel looked at me blankly as if they had no idea what I was talking about.The first story was Phantom of Kansas by John Varley, which involves having your "self" backed up and placed into a clone when you die -- and what happens if a clone of you with a complete backup of your personality gets created while you're still alive. The second story I brought up when they were talking about what kind of a society would arise in a world where you can't be killed, and that was the books Don't Bite the Sun and Drinking Sapphire Wine by Tanieth Lee. Actually at the time I said that I thought they were by C.J. Cherryh, but it hardly mattered because they didn't know what I was talking about anyway.
That just bugged me. Varley's short story is one of his best and a classic treatment of the subject, and Lee's novels are also a classic treatment of the concept of what happens in a society where everything is taken care of for you and you can never die. It's about "the search for meaning in a meaningless world" as one Amazon reviewer wrote.
I wanted to bring up another short story, but I couldn't quite remember the name or the author. It's another female science fiction author like Lee or Cherryh, (probably one of the two, or Joan D. Vinge, or Vonda McIntyre) and it was in a book of short stories called Habitation or something similar to that, and it had a short name like Home or Habitant or something... I forget all of the important details. But I own the book so I can look it up again. It's a very cool story on the idea of life inside and outside a computer, where a ship has crashed on a planet somewhere and many of the crew died, except that none of them really died, because they were "backed up" in the ship's computer. Thus they live and work in a bodiless environment, and the few bodies of those who lived are shared among the entire ship's population, so that everyone is allowed a day or two outside the computer to enjoy being in a physical body again. And the story is about the difference between those two existences, and explores what death might be like.
Anyway it hardly mattered because they wouldn't have known what I was talking about on that one either.
We also saw the movie previews. I think the thing I'm most interested in right now is an Alice In Wonderland movie made by Tim Burton and the project to do the Hobbit as a series of two movies, with Peter Jackson in charge (if the Tolkien estate doesn't block it through legal action.)
