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"did I had an extremely expensive wife - she would see a new car that she liked and just buy it... under California law I was bound to buy her debts. I think I turned out 16 novels in five years."
- Philip K. Dick
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| Joeboy (Muscle Grafts) | ||
| Additional muscle tissue added through surgery. |
Surgical alteration is a repeated theme in this book. Others have facial grafts, unusual dentition and even selected melanin boosting.
| Case turned his head and looked up into Wage's face. It was a tanned and forgettable mask. The eyes were vatgrown sea-green Nikon transplants. Wage wore a suit of gunmetal silk and a simple bracelet of platinum on either wrist. He was flanked by his joeboys, nearly identical young men, their arms and shoulders bulging with grafted muscle. |
| Technovelgy from Neuromancer,
by William Gibson. Published by Phantasia Press in 1984 Additional resources -
|
Muscle grafts or transplants are used to repair damage to existing tissue. For example, in 2001 a seven year-old boy almost lost his leg in a car accident. The biggest problem was the damage to the muscle tissue.
Surgeons transplanted the latissimus dorsi, a muscle in the upper back which is not vital to everyday movement. The operation was successful; the boy plays soccer with friends today.
Of course, the heart is a muscle, and heart transplants are not quite routine, but the survival rate is getting better every year.
I'm not aware of this kind of surgery being done to enhance strength in an otherwise healthy person. But compared with body modification on the scale in Samuel R. Delany's Babel-17, this may not seem so extreme. See the entry for decorative implant.
(Thanks AJU for help on this one.)
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Neuromancer
More Ideas
and Technology by William Gibson
Tech news articles related to Neuromancer
Tech news articles related to works by William Gibson
Joeboy (Muscle Grafts)-related
news articles:
- Bioengineered Muscle Grows In Mice
| ErythroMer Artificial Blood |
| MouthPad Supports Head And Tongue Tracking |
| Drug Induces Hibernation-Like State In Humans |
| Drug To Regenerate Teeth In Humans |
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'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
'Oscar picked up a trowel. 'I'm the tool for the mortar,' the little trowel squeaked cheerfully.'
'... he waited for the robotrix attendant to finish fueling up his ship.'
The Roujin Z system provides care to fully bedridden patients - and then some!
'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
