Re: Maybe thinking meat is a good idea

In article <slrng21jfl.90j.dbd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
David DeLaney <dbd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>On 6 May 2008 13:01:12 -0400, Joseph Nebus <nebusj-@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
[...]
>>	Are there stories in which a mature virtual population, folks 
>>who have had the time to consider and reflect and get used to life this 
>>way, come to the decision that it's better (by whatever standard) to 
>>live as a complicated biochemical process within a physical body?  And 
>>do they act on it?  
>
>I just read one today that fits this description, for a very small
population:
>Secret Realms by Tom Cool. It cheats, because the population in question
>actually is real people raised from infancy in a virtual environment, not
>quite "brain uploaded to pure code", but it definitely covers the
'they're
>used to living this way and then have to deal with whether to go to The
Real
>World and stay there'. (It's also rather pulpy with interludes of MilSF
>geekery.)

Well, if we're allowed to diverge from the original specification that
much,
to "real people raised from infancy in a virtual environment" who have to
"go to The Real World and stay there", there's Nick Sagan's _Idlewild_.

Then there are stories in which the character doesn't realise, at least 
to begin with, that they *are* an uploaded copy. Walter Jon William's 
"Daddy's World" is a really disturbing example.

-- 
Chris Thompson
Email: cet1 [at] cam.ac.uk