When interstellar travel is not only slower than light but also rare, the approach of an interstellar vessel is a major event:
"'Fenn,' she said, 'a ship from Alpha Centauri is approaching Proserpina.'
"Thunders rolled through his skull." (16, p. 206)
(For once, the thunder is internal, not external.)
How does the vessel's occupant experience the arrival?
"Guthrie woke." (17, p. 210)
Download Guthrie has been deactivated, not asleep and dreaming but dead, for thirty-five years. He was at Alpha Centauri at the end of Chapter 3. Chapters 4-16 have recounted Fenn's life in the Solar System. Download Guthrie has been deactivated but traveling all that time while his organic original remained at Beta Hydri and there is an organic Guthrie in each of two other planetary systems. We have to stop thinking in terms of a single, continuous Guthrie.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Easy to lose track of all these Guthries, both those downloaded into machine bodies and those now inhabiting organic bodies.
Ad astra! Sean
Note: if it's possible to download personalities into mechanical bodies, it should be possible to duplicate the 'input' from the biological body.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I remain extremely skeptical of such things being possible. Or even plain and simple AIs becoming real.
Albeit, the way my old Radio Shack 2150L chess computer keeps beating me makes it tempting to think otherwise! (Smiles)
Ad astra! Sean
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