Re: [ih] Fiction->History

[Miles Fidelman <mfidelman () meetinghouse net>]

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