Saturday 2 May 2015

What Did I Miss?

Poul Anderson, The Boat Of A Million Years (London, 1991).

In summarizing Flora's experience (see previous post), I omitted some details that might be considered significant:

the dead physicist describes the downloading of his mental pattern into the network as "...Augmentation..." (p. 486);

his time sense has changed - a few objective hours become millions of subjective years spent processing information, to be followed by a return to the pace of human thought in order to learn about and meditate on external events while he was transfigured;

by merging with others, Flora shares their experiences and identities - teacher, sportswoman, photosculptor, sybarite, dilettante mathematician, athlete, gilled sea-dweller, professional imaginer, a new multiply designed computer-conjoined personality - and then her old self says, "'No!'" (p. 487)

Anderson's account is so condensed that I must write my own summaries to get the full benefit from it.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

It was precisely speculations of the kind Anderson has Flora experiencing which makes BOAT such a rich and entertaining read. Altho I'm reasonably sure PA himself shared some of my skepticism as regards some of what he speculated about was even possible!

Sean