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"Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today -- but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Wimp | ||
| A special-purpose body; grown without personality, but physically intact. |
In the future world of Millennium, people speak what is described as a polyglot language; not only words from different languages, but different times as well. "Wimp" is used to describe a body that is grown complete, but left as a "blank slate" in terms of experience or awareness. Wimps are used to replace live people snatched from the past, people who will die anyway and not be missed, like people on a boat that goes down with no survivors.
| I was tumbled in a blue light. It was frightening, even to me, and I knew what was happening. My body was being studied in minute detail, from the bones outward. The process took about two seconds. I was catalogued out to eighty decimal places and the Big Computer began thumbing through its card file of wimps, looking for the best match. That took about a picosecond. Miles away, a morgue drawer would be springing open in the wimp vaults. My slumbering double would then come rushing toward the prep room, pulling twenty gees of acceleration... enough to cause brain damage if sustained, but that would be carrying coals to Newcastle. Compared to a wimp, a carrot is a mental giant. |
| Technovelgy from Millennium,
by John Varley. Published by Berkley Books in 1983 Additional resources -
|
In this scene the protagonist Louise Baltimore is mistakenly sorted into the wrong line; she is mistaken for someone snatched from the past. Her wimp is prepared, much to her disgust.
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'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
'Briquet’s head seemed to think that to find and attach a new body to her head was as easy as to fit and sew a new dress.'
'...copy was turned out in a charming and entirely feminine handwriting.'
'It was almost unheard of for slunch to spread that fast...'
'He then started hand movements of definite pattern...'
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain...'
