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"Science fiction represents the modern heresy and the cutting edge of speculative imagination as it grapples with Mysterious Time---linear or non-linear time."
- Frank Herbert
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| Meat Puppet | ||
| A person with a neural cut out chip; the chip allows computer software to completely control their actions. |
| "Where's the meat puppet?"
"There isn't any. That's the most expensive special service of all.' She stood up. She wore her leather jeans and a loose dark shirt... "This cost a lot," she said, extending her right hand as though it held an invisible fruit. The five blades slid out, then retracted smoothly. "Costs to go to Chiba, costs to get the surgery, costs to have them jack your nervous system up so you'll have the reflexes to go with the gear... You know how I got the money, when I was starting out? Here. Not here, but a place like it, in the Sprawl. Joke, to start with, 'cause once they plant the cut-out chip, it seems like free money. Wake up sore, sometimes, but that's it. Renting the goods, is all. You aren't in, when it's all happening. House has software for whatever a customer wants to pay for..." |
| Technovelgy from Neuromancer,
by William Gibson. Published by Phantasia Press in 1984 Additional resources -
|
Philip K. Dick had this idea thirty years earlier - see the entry for hypno-motor control from his chillingly prescient 1954 story Sales Pitch.
Probably the earliest reference to this idea is found in The Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum.
Also, compare to eccentric projection from The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1974) by James Tiptree, Jr.
‘Were the Scarecrow and I alone,’ said the Tin Woodman, ‘we would travel by night as well as by day; but with a meat person in our party, we must halt at night to permit him to rest.’
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and Technology from Neuromancer
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Tech news articles related to Neuromancer
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news articles:
- Mod My Life Site Working On Meat Puppets
| Lunar Biorepository Proposed For Cryo-Preservation Of Earth Species |
| Let's Make Slaver Sunflowers! Engineering Plants To Reflect Light |
| Machete-Wielding Philodendron Isn't Going To Take It Anymore |
| Tsunami Forecasts Improved By Ionosphere Signals |
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
