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"Does it open a new horizon for my thinking? Does it lead me to think new kinds of thoughts, that I would not otherwise perhaps have thought at all? These qualities are what [make] science fiction ...unique."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Synthetic Personality | ||
| A artificial identity, a legal fiction of a person. |
When relocating members of a clandestine organization, it was necessary to create travel documents based on legal fictions, identities that do not correspond to an individual, but are specially curated for just this kind of use.
| "What's a synthetic?" I enquired.
"Eh? Oh, it's a composite personality, very carefully built from faked records and faked backgrounds. A risky business--it involves tampering with the national archives. I don't like to use a synthetic, for there really isn't anyway to fill in completely the background of a man who doesn't exist. I'd much rather patch into the real background of a real person." "Then why use synthetics at all?" |
| Technovelgy from If This Goes On...,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1940 Additional resources -
|
I can't remember the exact term used, but I think this is called a "legend" in espionage tradecraft.
Thanks to Connor Lawrence for submitting this item.
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'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'
'The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.'
'Hasan always pitched a Gauzy - a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough.'
'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
