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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| Recorded Personalities | ||
| Computer firmware that saves a person's characteristics and reactions. |
The idea of a construct, or a recording of a person, was introduced in Neuromancer, by the same author. In this quote, however, the concept is given a delightful form, with more detail.
| There were similar things in her father's study, four of them, black lacquered cubes arranged along a low shelf of pine. Above each cube hung a formal portrait. The portraits were monochrome photographs of men in dark suits and ties, four very sober gentleman whose lapels were decorated with small metal emblems of the kind her father sometimes wore. Though her mother had told her that the cubes contained ghosts, the ghosts of her father's evil ancestors, Komiko found them more fascinating than frightening. Her father sometimes meditated before the cubes, kneeling on the bare tatami in an attitude that connoted profound respect. She had seen him in this position many times, but she was ten before she heard him address the cubes. And one had answered. The question had meant nothing to her, the answer less, but the calm tone of the ghost's reply had frozen her where she crouched, behind a door of paper, and her father had laughed to find her there; rather than scold her, he'd explained that the cubes housed the recorded personalities of former executives, corporate directors. "They're not conscious. They respond, when questioned, in a manner approximating the response of the subject." |
| Technovelgy from Mona Lisa Overdrive,
by William Gibson. Published by Bantam in 1988 Additional resources -
|
Gibson shows his writing ability by seamlessly fitting tomorrow's concept into a way of life that has endured for millennia. Meditating before pictures of people that you respect is common around the world; in this case, getting an answer is easier. Also, ancestor worship is deeply rooted in Shinto beliefs; certainly, a recorded personality has the power to influence the living world.
Compare to the Electronic Analogue of Living Brain from The Tunnel Under The World (1955) by Frederik Pohl.
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'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
'Then he became aware of a gentle pressure pushing him away from the ship.'
'And now they wre busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on...'
'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
