The Null Device

Scifi writers, discorporated

Apparently British technogoth scifi author Charlie Stross has uploaded to a new Sony PSP:
"Charlie was teetering on the precipice of transhumanism for the whole last year," said his friend and collaborator Cory Doctorow. "His lifestyle and cerebral/neurological capabilities had been ramped up through intensive ideation and selective smart-drug use to an exquisite pitch just short of the Singularity. When he laid his hands on that sweet, sweet hunk of hardware, it provided the critical mass of complexification necessary to tip him over fully into the Extropian ideal condition."

(Stross himself has posted a correction, saying that it was a Palm Pilot he uploaded to. Which makes more sense; would anyone with Stross' copyfighter credentials really want to upload to a Sony PSP? I imagine that, with the DRM infrastructure, it would be too much like being trapped in a prison for all eternity (or, at least, until the batteries run out).

Anyway, he may not be the first to have done so; it is rumoured that Australian hard-scifi writer Greg Egan's absence from the publishing world is due to him having uploaded some years ago:

Aussie critic and potential "Spiker" himself, Damien Broderick, comments, "I tried to visit Egan years ago, and found myself stuck in a timelike infinity loop once I got too close to his nominal address. Only the concerted efforts of Stephen Baxter, Vernor Vinge and Greg Bear were able to free me. And even now, all my interior organs remain reversed. I subsist solely on amino acids of alternate chiriality."

Really? And I thought he was too busy fighting for asylum-seekers' human rights.

There are 1 comments on "Scifi writers, discorporated":

Posted by: Eduardo. http:// Sat Apr 2 06:18:50 2005

I'm really sorry to post this here, as it is totally off-topic. I need to reach Andrew. Andrew, if you have read this far, please, read a bit more.

From: "E. Segura" <yahoo.com.ar> Subject: Dada engine on a FreeBSD 4.8-STABLE To: acb@dev.null.org

Hi, Andrew!

Hope you can help me. I have (almost, had to introduce 2 small modifications) successfully built Dada engine on my box. But it refuses to produce any output. It doesn't spit any error, it just exits silently.

Would you please help me? I need to get this working. Thanks in advance. Eduardo.

This email bounced,that's why I'm trying this blog. Again, sorry.