A back-up copy of yourself (Iain M Banks)

[Dave]

Working my way through these 'Culture' novels, and currently reading Look To Windward, I decided that this ability to back yourself up was a neat idea.

Members of the Culture already have a 'terminal' that keeps them in permanent contact with the Hub of an Orbital, or the Mind on a Ship, and they can be instantly zapped away from any life-threatening emergency. But, they also have the option of making a back-up copy of themselves, so that should something go wrong, and they actually somehow manage to kill themselves while doing some extreme sports, they can be stored while a new body is re-grown.

This means that they have the confidence to go molten lava-river rafting, glacier-caving, naked-blade fencing, mountain free-climbing, wing-flying, or whatever other extreme pastimes they can think up.

[Tabitha]

I really liked this idea.
Although I think I fear the pain and method of my (hopefully some time off in the future) death more than the idea that there might be nothing after.

With that method you remember everything right up until your death don't you? Rather than up until the last time you 'saved' yourself (or whatever).

[Dave]

I think it's only up to the point that you last saved.

If not, would you remember all the previous times that you died? I don't think I would be keen on having those memories.

[Dave]

4 years on and I agree, I would not want multipul memories of dying in excrutiating circumstances. However, this can't be the case, or else high ranking members of the Culture would not be signing up for it.

[steve12553]

I'm curious when this book came out. The concept or similar concepts were used in both the movie "the Sixth Day" and the current incarnation of Battlestar Gallactica.

[Dave]

It's been a while since I read them, so I'm not sure in which of the 'Culture' books this features. Look to Windward was first published in 2000, the same year that The Sixth Day was released. It is likely that they both took the idea originally from somewhere else, even earlier. If so, I'd be interested in the earliest reference too.

[chrispenycate]

John Varley uses the idea (storage of memories to be downloaded into clone bodies) frequently in his stories from the latter half of the seventies, and I'm far from sure it originated with him. (If you haven't read any Varley, it's well worth the side trip)

[Werthead]

Banks wrote his first two Culture novels (Player of Games and Use of Weapons) in 1977-79, although they were not published until about 10-12 years later. The first-published Culture novel, Consider Phlebas, was actually the third written. However, I'd be surprised if this idea hadn't been considered before. It sounds like the kind of thing Philip K. Dick would love playing around with.

Peter F. Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga (Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained) explores the concept really well too.

[iansales]

I think the idea first appeared in John Varley's 'Overdrawn at the Memory Bank', first published in Galaxy, May 1976.

Um, now I think of it, I seem to recall reading a PKD novel that features a person whose personality is actually on computer tape and whose world slowly begins to unravel as the computer malfunctions. The title escapes me, unfortunately.

[Dave]

Originally Posted by iansales

I seem to recall reading a PKD novel that features a person whose personality is actually on computer tape and whose world slowly begins to unravel as the computer malfunctions.

That certainly sounds like a Philip K Dick story, but not one I've read either (and I've read many anthologies of his short stories.)

[PTeppic]

On a similar theme I've already started writing what I'm calling a "brain backup", and I'm only mid-30s. I've found I've apparently forgotten so much stuff already that I'm a bit late (though being prompted by friends and family often recovers pseudo-lost fragments). Yes, it's almost "memoirs" or "autobiography" but they're usually much smaller and more specific. I'm trying to make it "everything" I can currently remember about things. That will make the older stuff easy but the more recent things quite tricky (and extensive).

[iansales]

The is the PKD story I was thinking of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Electric_Ant

... not as relevant as I'd remembered...

[Lyrebird]

Similar ideas are explored in other works... The more recent "Night's Dawn" trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton, for example. And even the film "The 6th Day" . Also, consider the concept of a ghost, as depicted in Harry Potter, and the concept of the 'pensieve'.

[speedingslug]

Hi Werthead *Waves*

I'm into this type of book of late which is the best one to start at?

[Vetch]

Just a though concerning the procedure itself:

It wouldn't be you. You would be dead. The back up would be a copy of you, nice for loved ones you leave behind. They would not know the difference. You - this living, self-reflecting consciousness of Here and Now - would be dead though.