Science Fiction Dictionary
A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z

Latest By
Category:


Armor
Artificial Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work

"I'm a farm boy. It's very interesting; you can detect self-starting characteristics in this society and they are strongest among people who have had some kind of rural upbringing and a very impressionable stage."
- Frank Herbert

Eccentric Projection  
  Remote manipulation of a body not your own.  

They go into a dim room containing a huge cabinet like a one-man sauna and a console for Joe. The room has a glass wall that’s all dark now. And just for your information, the whole shebang is five hundred feet underground near what used to be Carbondale, Pa.
Joe opens the sauna-cabinet like a big clamshell standing on end with a lot of funny business inside. Our girl shucks her shi and walks into it bare, totally unembarrassed. Eager. She settles in face-forward, butting jacks into sockets. Joe closes it carefully onto her humpback. Clunk. She can’t see in there or hear or move. She hates this minute. But how she loves what comes next!
Joe’s at his console and the lights on the other side of the glass wall come up. A room is on the other side, all fluff and kicky bits, a girly bedroom. In the bed is a small mound of silk with a rope of yellow hair hanging out. The sheets stirs and gets whammed back flat.
Sitting up in the bed is the darlingest girl child you’ve EVER seen. She quiv- ers—porno for angels. She sticks both her little arms straight up, flips her hair, looks around full of sleepy pazazz. Then she can’t resist rubbing her hands down over her minibreasts and belly. Because, you see, it’s the godawful P. Burke who is sitting there hugging her perfect girl-body, looking at you out of delighted eyes.
Then the kitten hops out of bed and crashes flat on the floor.
From the sauna in the dim room comes a strangled noise. P. Burke, trying to rub her wired-up elbow is suddenly smothered in two bodies, electrodes jerking in her flesh. Joe juggles inputs, crooning into his mike. The flurry passes; it’s all right.
In the lighted room the elf gets up, casts a cute glare at the glass wall and goes into a transparent cubicle. A bathroom, what else? She’s a live girl, and live girls have to go to the bathroom after a night’s sleep even if their brains are in a sauna-cabinet in the next room. And P. Burke isn’t in that cabinet, she’s in the bathroom. Perfectly simple, if you have the glue for that closed training circuit that’s letting her run her neural system by remote control. Now let’s get one thing clear. P. Burke does not feel her brain is in the sauna room, she feels she’s in that sweet little body. When you wash your hands, do you feel the water is running on your brain? Of course not. You feel the water on your hand, although the “feeling” is actually a potential-pattern flickering over the electrochemical jelly between your ears. And it’s delivered there via the long circuits om your hands. Just so, P. Burke’s brain in the cabinet feels the water on her hands in the bathroom. The fact that the signals have jumped across space on the way in makes no difference at all. If you want the jargon, it’s known as eccentric projection or sensory reference and you’ve done it all your life. Clear?
Technovelgy from The Girl Who Was Plugged In, by James Tiptree, Jr..
Published by Doubleday in 1974
Additional resources -

Compare to the Teleoperated Robot Surrogate from The Robot and the Lady (1938) by Manly Wade Wellman and the meat puppets from Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson.

Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |

Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Girl Who Was Plugged In
  More Ideas and Technology by James Tiptree, Jr.
  Tech news articles related to The Girl Who Was Plugged In
  Tech news articles related to works by James Tiptree, Jr.

Articles related to Communication
Will Whales Be Our First Contact?
NYC/Dublin Portal Fails To Meet 'Guardian Of Forever' Standards
Holobox? Who Doesn't Want A Home Hologram?
EBS-260 Handjet Free Hand Dot Matrix Printer

Want to Contribute an Item? It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add it here.

<Previous
Next>

Google
  Web TechNovelgy.com   

 

 

Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Science Fiction Invention Timeline, or see what's New.

 

 

 

 

Science Fiction Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's   1950's
1960's   1970's
1980's   1990's
2000's   2010's

Science Fiction in the News

Finally, Robot Conductors On Autonomous Buses
'Wardour Street,' he told the robot-conductor.'

RoboShiko! Sumo Exercises Still Good For Robots
'... the expressionless face before me was therefore that of the golem-wrestler, Rolem, a creature that could be set for five times the strength of a human being.'

Giant Robotic Hands At Gundam Next Future Science
'Waldo put his arms into the primary pair before him; all three pairs, including the secondary pair mounted before the machine, came to life.'

JWST Finds Bucking Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1
'... the glittering little rocket bolted to the black iron behind him.'

BeamBike Solar Power Canopy For Electric Bikes
'The slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector...'

California Fireman Arrested For Starting Fires
'Fire is bright and fire is clean.'

Robots Need A Better Sense Of Touch
'First, it rubbed my arms...'

MouthPad Supports Head And Tongue Tracking
'The operation that had transformed half his body... had located the control switchboard in his teeth.'

REALLY Remote Control Excavators
'It takes over a second for the signal to get to the Moon...'

Disney Helping Robots Dance
Dance, Robots, Dance.

More SF in the News

More Beyond Technovelgy

Home | Glossary | Science Fiction Timeline | Category | New | Contact Us | FAQ | Advertise |
Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction™

Copyright© Technovelgy LLC; all rights reserved.