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"This category [science fiction] excludes rocket ships that make U-turns, serpent men of Neptune that lust after human maidens, and stories by authors who flunked their Boy Scout merit badge tests in descriptive astronomy."
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Although the term 'avatar' was used in an earlier computer game, Neal Stephenson was the first person to spend a fair amount of time in the metaverse describing them. Certainly, the novel Snow Crash popularized and fixed the term in the computer science lexicon.
An avatar is an incarnation of a deity in human form; the literal meaning of the Sanskrit word is "he passes or crosses down." It is taken from Hindu philosophy. Just as the deity "passes down" from the higher realms of being to the simpler realm of the material Earth, so a person becomes an avatar in a simpler computer-generated reality.
The first use of graphic or text virtual identities was in multi-user domains (MUDs); although MUDs were first created in the late nineteen-seventies, "avatar" is a more recent term for a virtual character.
In the 1985 game Ultima IV, to become the Avatar was essentially the goal of the game. This became your screen name; customization of your Avatar character was allowed.
For a "real-world" example, see the SF in the News story Church of Fools: The Coming of the Avatar?. Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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Science Fiction
Timeline
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'...they moved with the ease of dandelion puffs.'
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'...some bored drone pusher in a remote driving centre...'
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'...the meteor caught and halted just as a small boy catches a swift ball in his cap.'
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'We have decided that it shall be but one ship... it must contain everything needed to take us through the generations.'
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'You’re the robopsychologist of the plant, so you’re to study the robot itself...'
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