On 9/24/2015 10:56, Bill Ricker wrote:
On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 10:27 PM, Larry Sheldon <larrysheldon@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. -- sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)
Larry Sheldon wrote:
On 9/24/2015 10:56, Bill Ricker wrote:
On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 10:27 PM, Larry Sheldon <larrysheldon@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
participants (2)
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Larry Sheldon -
Miles Fidelman