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From: @RUTGERS.ARPA:jpa144@cit-vax
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Subject: Memory recording stories
Message-ID: <1058@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 27-Mar-85 21:47:25 EST
Article-I.D.: topaz.1058
Posted: Wed Mar 27 21:47:25 1985
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From: jpa144@cit-vax (Jens Peter Alfke)


There has been some discussion (started by "Brainstorm", a movie which I must
confess I haven't seen) about recording/transmission of human thoughts, and
about stories concerning the same.
Here are a few that I remember:

"The Duelling Machine" by Ben Bova.  Set in a far-future galactic empire, this
	is about a machine which projects two "players" into a fantasy land-
	scape created by computer.  The players can do anything to each other
	in the game, which ends when one surrenders.  It is intended to be used
	as a means to peacefully settle disputes, but various nasties find ways
	to do unpleasant things with it.

"The Mueller-Fokker Effect" by John Sladek.  A very very strange book,
	stylistically similar to the /Illuminatus/ series, which concerns,
	among a few dozen other plots, a man who "volunteers" for a government
	experiment which transfers his personality and memories to magnetic
	tape, after which his body is accidentally destroyed.  It turns out,
	though, that his "soul" attains consciousness of a sort while in the
	tape . . . [I believe this one is out of print.  Too bad.  Does anyone
	know if it's still around, or if Sladek wrote anything else besides
	this and /The Best of John Sladek/ ??]

A book whose title escapes me, by D.G. Compton, which strikes me as being *very*
	similar to what I've heard about Brainstorm, about a small company
	which develops an "experience-recording" device.  As I recall, one
	of the things that they made tapes of was a sex act (with partners
	solicited by personal ads), and the machines were eventually sold,
	along with tapes.

The novels "A World Out Of Time" and "Integral Trees" by Larry Niven also use
	the idea of putting a human's personality into a computer, as does
	his Berserker story, "A Teardrop Falls" (in /Limits/).

John Varley's future history also has people's minds being recoded (on "Ferro-
	Photo-Nucleic Acid") and played into clones upon the original body's
	death.

Also see the movie "Dreamscape".


Whee!  There must be dozens more stories on this theme . . .


						--Peter Alfke
"I can't think of an amusing quote to put here."