June 29, 2007
I came across ‘Garcia’s Heart’ while browsing & thought of a few other examples of “neurofiction,” so here is the start of a list. I’m sure there are many more…
12/5/07 – Another to add to the list: Saturday
by Ian McEwan (recommended in Proust Was a Neuroscientist
)
Comments (19)
- cognitive science,consciousness,fiction,mind
June 12, 2007
I caught myself looking longingly at the fiction after a spate of nonfiction, so I picked up a copy of Glasshouse
by Charles Stross, which turned out to be an entertaining “thought-experiment” dealing with issues of mind and identity, wrapped in a good story.
In Stross’s future, memories can be erased, personalities edited, people regularly make back-up copies of themselves, and their minds can be placed in different bodies. Problems and issues such as these arise:
p 2 – “It’s tough, not being able to tell the difference between your own thoughts and a postsurgical identity prosthesis.”
p 15 – “Not wearing a face in public is a deliberate snub.”
The action soon moves to an experimental simulation of a ‘Dark Ages’ society (c. 1950-2040), which affords a look back at the present-day world from the future perspective.
At Stross’s website, www.accelerando.org, his earlier book Accelerando is available as a free ebook.
Author’s blog: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/
Comments (0)
- fiction,mind,self
March 25, 2007
Blindsight
by Peter Watts: An interesting SF novel dealing with issues of consciousness, especially questions concerning the costs and benefits of consciousness. The extensive “notes and references” section at the end especially praises Thomas Metzinger’s Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity (Bradford Books)
(which I haven’t read).
Watts’s website is www.rifters.com.
Comments (1)
- consciousness,fiction
by Liam Durcan (neurologist at a war crimes trial)
by Richard Powers (Capgras syndrome)
by Steven Hall (“conceptual shark” attack)
by Dan Lloyd (consciousness theory plus murder mystery)
by Lawrence Shainberg (brain damage, brain surgery)
