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"What I have in my stories is ethics. Ethics and morality are very different cups of tea. I adhere to a very strict rigor of personal ethics and I demand it of those around me as well."
- Harlan Ellison
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| Meat Puppet | ||
| A person with a neural cut out chip; the chip allows computer software to completely control their actions. |
| "Where's the meat puppet?"
"There isn't any. That's the most expensive special service of all.' She stood up. She wore her leather jeans and a loose dark shirt... "This cost a lot," she said, extending her right hand as though it held an invisible fruit. The five blades slid out, then retracted smoothly. "Costs to go to Chiba, costs to get the surgery, costs to have them jack your nervous system up so you'll have the reflexes to go with the gear... You know how I got the money, when I was starting out? Here. Not here, but a place like it, in the Sprawl. Joke, to start with, 'cause once they plant the cut-out chip, it seems like free money. Wake up sore, sometimes, but that's it. Renting the goods, is all. You aren't in, when it's all happening. House has software for whatever a customer wants to pay for..." |
| Technovelgy from Neuromancer,
by William Gibson. Published by Phantasia Press in 1984 Additional resources -
|
Philip K. Dick had this idea thirty years earlier - see the entry for hypno-motor control from his chillingly prescient 1954 story Sales Pitch.
Probably the earliest reference to this idea is found in The Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum.
Also, compare to eccentric projection from The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1974) by James Tiptree, Jr.
‘Were the Scarecrow and I alone,’ said the Tin Woodman, ‘we would travel by night as well as by day; but with a meat person in our party, we must halt at night to permit him to rest.’
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from Neuromancer
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and Technology by William Gibson
Tech news articles related to Neuromancer
Tech news articles related to works by William Gibson
Meat Puppet-related
news articles:
- Mod My Life Site Working On Meat Puppets
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'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
'Henry... assumed the curious absent look of a robot talking on the TBR circuits.'
'The king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions...'
'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
'Then he became aware of a gentle pressure pushing him away from the ship.'
'And now they wre busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on...'
