[ih] Fiction->History

Fri Sep 25 01:16:20 UTC 2015

Larry Sheldon wrote:
> On 9/24/2015 10:56, Bill Ricker wrote:
>> On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 10:27 PM, Larry Sheldon <larrysheldon at cox.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Fiction->History
>>>
>> There are two sorts of SciFi (aside from the Fantastic) - those that
>> aren't facts yet
>>
>> but likely will be if we persevere, and those that could be facts 
>> if we
>> screw things up even worse. Those writing near-term SF are well 
>> advised to
>> leverage  William Gibson's aphorism "The future is already here - 
>> it's just
>> not evenly distributed" to sniff out what is in the labs and the 
>> pockets of
>> the early adopters.
>>
>>
>>> 
>>> In 1977 there was a book titled “The Adolescence of P-1” (Thomas Joseph
>>> Ryan)
>>>
>>
>> I thought I remembered this was either serialized or first appeared as a
>> novella in one of the magazines before release as a book, but Google 
>> finds
>> no proof of that? Odd.
>>     There was a flurry of pre-cyber-punk AI / rogue-programmer 
>> stories in
>> Analog in the late 70's, i recall one featured a female hacker but i 
>> forget
>> the title, and that it was the month before or after P-1 so it seemed a
>> trend.
>
> I guess I had forgotten how much there is--I was a Heinlein reader 
> sub-teen but in general lost interest in SciFi--this book and 
> "Contact" (and maybe "Broca's Brain") are the only ones that come to 
> mind since then (unless you want to include George Orwell, Aldous 
> Huxley, Ayn Rand, and George Lucas).
>
> I mentioned "P-1" here because it is the only one of the lot (that I 
> can remember) where the _network_ is a (the) major protagonist.
>
Clark's "Dial F for Frankenstein" -- "deep in his heart, he knew that 
the telephone bell had tolled for the human race." :-)


-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra