From: Damien Broderick (damienb@unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Fri Jul 04 2003 - 19:48:09 MDT
After seeking a new noun, Ben quoted Sturgeon, the 1950s poet of gestalt
minds. In the unfortunately titled THE COSMIC RAPE, Sturgeon portrayed
humanity invaded by an alien species, to their surprising mutual benefit:
the `medusa' (from the commensal jellyfish not the Greek frightener).
That's a possibility. Another, on the same grounds, is a `coral'.
Around the same time, in WOLFBANE, Fred Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth put the
remnants of the human species into a Matrix-like cross-wired ensemble, the
`Snowflake'. You could do worse than that.
Another writer who explored this area much later is Michael Swanwick. In
VACUUM FLOWERS, Earth's minds link into a colony mind, the Comprise.
My chapter on this literary background is `terrible Angels: Science Fiction
and the Singularity', in my TRANSREALIST FICTION, Greenwood Press, 2000.
Damien Broderick
www.thespike.us
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