>H Transhumanism in Fiction: Who? What work?

[Robert Owen <rowen@technologist.com>]

Transhuman Mailing List

Who do you suppose created the following fictional metaphor of trans-
humanism, and in what work is this passage to be found?


     "And now, out among the stars, evolution was driving toward new
goals.  [They had] long since come to the limits of flesh and blood;
as soon as their machines were better than their bodies, it was time
to move.  First their brains, and then their thoughts alone, they trans-
ferred into shining new homes of metal and plastic.

     "In these they roamed the stars.  They no longer built spaceships.
They were spaceships.

     "But the age of the Machine-entities swiftly passed.  In their
ceaseless experimenting, they had learned to store knowledge in the
structure of space itself, and to preserve their thoughts for eternity
in frozen lattices of light. They could become creatures of radiation,
free at last from the tyranny of matter.

     "Into pure energy, therefore, they presently transformed them-
selves, beyond the reach of time...They could rove at will among the
stars, and sink like a subtle mist through the very interstices of space."



=======================
Robert M. Owen
Director
The Orion Institute
57 W. Morgan Street
Brevard, NC 28712-3659 USA
=======================



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