CS Lewis: a guillotined head kept alive by scientific apparatus;
James Blish: a brain kept alive in a case;
Poul Anderson: a personality downloaded into an artificial neural network.
First the head, then the brain, then the personality.
Julian May adds another brain. Jon Remillard's cancerous body must be systematically amputated until all that is left is an artificially maintained brain, communicating telepathically. Then that brain psychokinetically creates a body around it. Jack is a prochronistic Mental Man. I should have included him in "Scientific Survival."
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And I appreciate all these FAR OUT speculations by the authors you listed. My personal inclination is to be rather prosaic. Science fiction helps to keep me from becoming too mentally stodgy!
Altho Jon Remillard's bodiless brain was rather a strain, I admit! And I'm still skeptical about AIs, downloading of human personalities into artificial neural networks, etc.
Sean
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