Umberto Rossi wrote: > Just read PK Dick's "Autofac", which was published in the early > Fifties. What's in "Autofac" ? Excerpts, please ? Read Dick's bio a couple of years. Was not very impressed but he seems to be popular in Hollywood. And both "Blade Runner" and "Total Recall" were not bad movies. > The basic idea of the Internet and the cyberspace can be found in > several works written well before 1980. There are many stories > written bu Phil Dick where the theme of artificial reality, both > mechanical and electronic, is used, but I would just like to point out > the brilliant Dr. Adder written by Kevin W Jeter in the early > seventies. You do not heve the technicalities there, but the basic > idea is already there. What stories of Dick ? Where's the prediction in _Dr Adder_ ? Excerpts, please ? Excerpts, please ? > In some stories of the early sixties you have communication devices > not bigger than wristwatches. Once again, which Sf are we talking > about? Sf is the name for a class of prose narrative which assumes an imaginary technological or scientific advance, or depends upon an imaginary and spectacular change in the human environment. Not convinced. What about all the mistakes in sf books ? Early sf-computers developed a mind of there own. Evil, big things that became a threat to their masters. John W. Campbell _The Last Evolution_ where machines replace humans as a new phase in evolution. D.F. Jones _Colossus_ (1966, movie "The Forbin Project) in which an American super computer allies itself with its Soviet counterpart. In Arthur C. Clarke's "2001" the computer says "Sorry, Dave, can't do more" while it kills the crew. In a Fredric Brown short story from 1954 man builds a super computer to find out if there is a God. No doubt huge, central computers dominate in sf whatever Dick might have written. But admittedly Clarke wrote about geostationary satellites in Wireless World 1945. Satellites, Virtual Reality and robotic technique, yes. Internet, Personal Computers and mobile phones, no. My bet is still on EJ. Greetings Bertil Haggman
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