tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post2599583384349126541..comments2024-03-09T14:13:14.671+00:00Comments on News & Press from The Future Fire: U is for Uploaded MindsDjibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-60041115507355242972011-09-25T23:36:32.848+01:002011-09-25T23:36:32.848+01:00Deep End by Nisi Shawl is also a wonderfully poign...<i>Deep End</i> by Nisi Shawl is also a wonderfully poignant story about a prison colony with convicts uploaded into a simulation on a starship's computer, eventually to be downloaded into new bodies to colonize a distant world. She manages to make this story about race and gender identity and cultural imperialism as well as a profound study of what it means to be human in a computer simulation. I'd recommend it.Djibrilhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-55202442022855516152011-09-25T18:45:51.992+01:002011-09-25T18:45:51.992+01:00The first story that comes to mind is Iain Banks&#...The first story that comes to mind is Iain Banks' "Feersum Endjinn". Here people can have seven lives, and once these are expired, they pass into a virtual reality.<br /><br />It seems to me that the success of the Matrix movies was such that it is difficult to write a story related to simulated reality without it being labeled cliche'.<br /><br />Entire groups or civilizations plugging into virtual worlds is a hard trope to come by, but there are other examples examples of isolated VR, such as people's minds being put into cold storage in "Neuromancer".Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-2391807407919116912011-09-21T23:51:53.472+01:002011-09-21T23:51:53.472+01:00I would suggest Richard Morgan's Takeshi Kovac...I would suggest Richard Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs trilogy as examining the socio-political aspects of what happens when you can transfer minds across vast distances and into other bodies -- or simply load them into long-term virtual storage (with or without interactivity, to varying degrees) when the body is too damaged/inconvenient/unavailable.Shayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12301633557588410585noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-57241272803312177092011-09-21T23:24:55.338+01:002011-09-21T23:24:55.338+01:00Thanks for this thoughtful and in-depth discussion...Thanks for this thoughtful and in-depth discussion, Will. There's certainly a lot of promise in the genre/theme of personality-digitization, and a lot of questions one could use it to ask about the nature of the human, the relationship between mind and body, the location of the self, etc. One of the earliest stories on this theme I can think of, William Gibson's 'Winter Market' is about a disabled young woman who moves her entire life into a simulation because she is dissatisfied with her flesh. Just think of the problems and questions that such a possibility throws up. (Count Zero's upload in <i>Mona Lisa Overdrive</i> is only ever presented from the outside, so we miss any possible discussion of his view of the world.)<br /><br />I asked on Twitter for suggestions of social-political SF on this theme: <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/rhiannonrevolts" rel="nofollow">@rhiannonrevolts</a> offered: "It's sad that the only one I can think of that fits somewhat into sociopolitical discourse is Stross' Accelerando/Glasshouse" (which I had been trying to avoid talking about, because while very inventive and technologically intelligent it sidesteps the most important social-political questions, for me); <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/pgcd" rel="nofollow">@pgcd</a> wrote: "Greg Egan's work deals v. frequently with the theme (Diaspora, Permutation City, several other stories)", and added: "Egan is not very good at emotions, but he's extraordinary when speculating and extrapolating. He comes from the future =)".<br /><br />There is of course at least one story about brain upload in <i>TFF</i>: Nader Elhefnawy's ‘<a href="http://futurefire.net/2009.15/fiction/transmigration.html" rel="nofollow">The Transmigration</a>’, a story which highlights many of the problems and fears people have with existing only in software. (We discussed some of these issues in an <a href="http://futurefire.net/2005.03/nonfiction/consciousness.html" rel="nofollow">opinion piece</a> several years back.) Another story with a similar theme is ‘<a href="http://futurefire.net/2009.18/fiction/alltheway.html" rel="nofollow">All the Way</a>’ by Graham Storrs, although it doesn't involve living in a virtual world in the sense you describe it in this blog post, but rather as a software agent with a physical present (as an off-world robot engineer).<br /><br />So there's still a lot of discussion to have here. Any more suggestions for reading in this area?Djibrilhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com