Short Story
Number of words : 5900
Percent of complex words : 11.4
Average syllables per word : 1.6
Average words per sentence : 15.7
READABILITY INDICES
Fog : 10.8
Flesch : 57.7
Flesch-Kincaid : 9.1
PEOPLE
Worrier
A man who stresses about the philosophy and reality of having his own brain and self replaced with the Jewel.
Eva
His first love and girlfriend at sixteen.
Plato and Descartes and Marx
Philosophers.
St. Augustine, Sartre, heard of Godel, Turing, Hamsun and Ki
More philosophers.
Daphne
His wife, a merchant banker.
Cathy
His lover.
TECHNOLOGY
Ndoli Device
The Jewel. A technology that replaces the human brain gradually enmeshing itself in childhood via nanotech surgical robots and teaching itself the brain functions of the person, so the brain can be replaced later in adulthood.
MEDIA
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
A movie.
PLOT
A man worries about his Ndoli Device process and if he will remain himself after the operation to insert it. His parents underdog the process and don't tell him and he doesn't notice. His wife and later lover do as well and seem no different. This causes even more stress when he is a rare case of the Teacher unit process failing. This causes him and the Jewel to get more out of synch - which means there will be a difference on switchover of that time period. Maybe this happens more than people know, and is covered up. His relationship with his former lover is discarded.
3.5 out of 5
Showing posts with label ndoli device. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ndoli device. Show all posts
Friday, March 18, 2011
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Closer - Greg Egan
Short Story
Number of words : 5800
Percent of complex words : 13.6
Average syllables per word : 1.6
Average words per sentence : 17.1
READABILITY INDICES
Fog : 12.3
Flesch : 55.5
Flesch-Kincaid : 9.8
PEOPLE
Sian
A communications engineer.
Michael
A holovision news editor.
Craig Bentley
A cyberneurologist.
Elvis Presley
A rock star.
Marilyn Monroe
An actress.
Foucault
Famous for a pendulum.
TECHNOLOGY
Ndoli Device
A neural-net computer implanted shortly after birth, imitates the brain down to neuron level.
Hover-camera
Mobile flying recorder.
Mature Extras
Fully grown clones of yourself.
MEDIA
Waiting for Godot
A play performed by augmented parrots.
Bond of Union
Lithograph by Escher.
Sian and Michael meet at work and fall in love. The Ndoli device confers immortality if desired, so they experiment. With switching bodies, with identical bodies, with clones of themselves. Then with identical minds, and finally being joined in one artificial body.
This complete revelation proves too much for them to be able to stay together as a couple.
3.5 out of 5
http://eidolon.net/?story=Closer&pagetitle=Closer§ion=fiction
Number of words : 5800
Percent of complex words : 13.6
Average syllables per word : 1.6
Average words per sentence : 17.1
READABILITY INDICES
Fog : 12.3
Flesch : 55.5
Flesch-Kincaid : 9.8
PEOPLE
Sian
A communications engineer.
Michael
A holovision news editor.
Craig Bentley
A cyberneurologist.
Elvis Presley
A rock star.
Marilyn Monroe
An actress.
Foucault
Famous for a pendulum.
TECHNOLOGY
Ndoli Device
A neural-net computer implanted shortly after birth, imitates the brain down to neuron level.
Hover-camera
Mobile flying recorder.
Mature Extras
Fully grown clones of yourself.
MEDIA
Waiting for Godot
A play performed by augmented parrots.
Bond of Union
Lithograph by Escher.
Sian and Michael meet at work and fall in love. The Ndoli device confers immortality if desired, so they experiment. With switching bodies, with identical bodies, with clones of themselves. Then with identical minds, and finally being joined in one artificial body.
This complete revelation proves too much for them to be able to stay together as a couple.
3.5 out of 5
http://eidolon.net/?story=Closer&pagetitle=Closer§ion=fiction
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Border Guards - Greg Egan
Novelette
Number of words : 9300
Percent of complex words : 10.8
Average syllables per word : 1.5
Average words per sentence : 17.8
READABILITY INDICES
Fog : 11.4
Flesch : 62.0
Flesch-Kincaid : 9.0
PEOPLE
Jamil
A quantum soccer player.
Maria
Another player.
Ezequiel
Another player.
Margit Osvit
An opponent of Jamil's, a top-class player. Also 7594 years old and a researcher responsible for access to the New Territories, along with Grace.
Chusok
Another player.
Hashim
Jamil's ninety-eighth child.
Laila
Hashim's granddaughter.
Penina
Another player.
Emmy Noether
Group theory pioneer.
Ryuichi
A player that leaves.
Eudore
Player who hosts a party.
Aminata
Jamil's first daughter.
Grace Fust
A friend of Margit's and a researcher.
Ndoli
Nigerian inventor of the jewel.
Gandhi
Indian leader resistance leader.
Mandela
South African resistance leader.
Aung San Suu Kyi
Burmese resistance leader.
Joracy
Another player.
Christa
Another player.
Yann
Another player.
Narcyza
Another player.
Halide
Another player.
TECHNOLOGY
Quantum soccer
A sport involving balls and technology and probability.
Lie groups
Jamil's current study interest in mathematics.
PLACES
Noether
The city Jamil is living in.
Laplace
A planet with a microsun in an artificial universe.
New Territories
A group of artificial universes.
Ndoli jewel
A brain replacement that can be backed up, allowing immortality.
A good chunk of the first part of the piece is about the playing of this future game of probability manipulation via opposing teams.
Jamil is intrigued by the opposition’s star player, Margit, even more so after their team is waxed by hers. A woman of mystery.
Jamil is upset that a friend of his is moving away, and here you start to see, that along with playing strange games, these people are likely rather old, and also cue mystery woman arriving on the scene:
So, he goes back to studying until the next soccer game, where Margit and teammates wipe the floor with them again. It appears that Jamil may have managed to draw the stranger out of her shell, as she turns up at his house. Further, it appears this woman is not just the aloof independent super-athlete that everyone thinks.
She wants more than just dinner, clearly, and after sleeping together, the next morning her trauma begins to be revealed.
The traumatic event she and her friend underwent (kidnap and torture) spurred them on to develop the Ndoli jewel to prevent people suffering what they had undergone in the same way.
Needless to say, immortality is going to get, in particular, religious opposition, and Margit and Jamil discuss this, along with further discoveries made that enabled travel and expansion – something pretty handy when you have huge numbers of people that can live a very long time. The suicide of her friend and colleague is at the heart of her bitterness
So we come to another issue of the story, that of the generation gap. Here, it is really about as large as you can get. Margit, one of the first of the long lived encounters a young generation, who she thinks can’t understand what she has experienced particularly with regards to people actually dying, as opposed to just up and vanishing for some length of time, like Jamil’s friend.
Before the next quantum soccer game, Jamil talks to his fellow players about what is troubling the enigmatic star, to see if they can overcome their generation gap.
After she manages a particularly spectacular goal, they stop the game early, and here is where the title comes from:
Ezequiel said, “We want to be your border guards. We want to stand beside you.”
5 out of 5
"Martin turned to Omar. “So what does a paramedic do when he comes across a man dressed as a woman?” He was assuming Jabari's companion was pre-operative, though that wasn't necessarily the case; Ayatollah Khomeini, no less, had issued a startlingly enlightened fatwa in the eighties, declaring that gender reassignment surgery was a perfectly acceptable practice.
Omar said, “For a heroin addict lying in an alley, who knows? But for this, I think he acts like he doesn't notice. Why make te-rouble?”
Martin pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. A male paramedic had an excuse to play dumb, but what happened when a female doctor examined the patient more closely? Notwithstanding Khomeini's ruling, there was no guarantee that a man who took oestrogen and put on an evening gown was going to sail through the segregated medical system without igniting some form of commotion."
4 out of 5
http://gregegan.net/BORDER/Complete/Border.html
Number of words : 9300
Percent of complex words : 10.8
Average syllables per word : 1.5
Average words per sentence : 17.8
READABILITY INDICES
Fog : 11.4
Flesch : 62.0
Flesch-Kincaid : 9.0
PEOPLE
Jamil
A quantum soccer player.
Maria
Another player.
Ezequiel
Another player.
Margit Osvit
An opponent of Jamil's, a top-class player. Also 7594 years old and a researcher responsible for access to the New Territories, along with Grace.
Chusok
Another player.
Hashim
Jamil's ninety-eighth child.
Laila
Hashim's granddaughter.
Penina
Another player.
Emmy Noether
Group theory pioneer.
Ryuichi
A player that leaves.
Eudore
Player who hosts a party.
Aminata
Jamil's first daughter.
Grace Fust
A friend of Margit's and a researcher.
Ndoli
Nigerian inventor of the jewel.
Gandhi
Indian leader resistance leader.
Mandela
South African resistance leader.
Aung San Suu Kyi
Burmese resistance leader.
Joracy
Another player.
Christa
Another player.
Yann
Another player.
Narcyza
Another player.
Halide
Another player.
TECHNOLOGY
Quantum soccer
A sport involving balls and technology and probability.
Lie groups
Jamil's current study interest in mathematics.
PLACES
Noether
The city Jamil is living in.
Laplace
A planet with a microsun in an artificial universe.
New Territories
A group of artificial universes.
Ndoli jewel
A brain replacement that can be backed up, allowing immortality.
A good chunk of the first part of the piece is about the playing of this future game of probability manipulation via opposing teams.
Jamil is intrigued by the opposition’s star player, Margit, even more so after their team is waxed by hers. A woman of mystery.
Jamil is upset that a friend of his is moving away, and here you start to see, that along with playing strange games, these people are likely rather old, and also cue mystery woman arriving on the scene:
So, he goes back to studying until the next soccer game, where Margit and teammates wipe the floor with them again. It appears that Jamil may have managed to draw the stranger out of her shell, as she turns up at his house. Further, it appears this woman is not just the aloof independent super-athlete that everyone thinks.
She wants more than just dinner, clearly, and after sleeping together, the next morning her trauma begins to be revealed.
The traumatic event she and her friend underwent (kidnap and torture) spurred them on to develop the Ndoli jewel to prevent people suffering what they had undergone in the same way.
Needless to say, immortality is going to get, in particular, religious opposition, and Margit and Jamil discuss this, along with further discoveries made that enabled travel and expansion – something pretty handy when you have huge numbers of people that can live a very long time. The suicide of her friend and colleague is at the heart of her bitterness
So we come to another issue of the story, that of the generation gap. Here, it is really about as large as you can get. Margit, one of the first of the long lived encounters a young generation, who she thinks can’t understand what she has experienced particularly with regards to people actually dying, as opposed to just up and vanishing for some length of time, like Jamil’s friend.
Before the next quantum soccer game, Jamil talks to his fellow players about what is troubling the enigmatic star, to see if they can overcome their generation gap.
After she manages a particularly spectacular goal, they stop the game early, and here is where the title comes from:
Ezequiel said, “We want to be your border guards. We want to stand beside you.”
5 out of 5
"Martin turned to Omar. “So what does a paramedic do when he comes across a man dressed as a woman?” He was assuming Jabari's companion was pre-operative, though that wasn't necessarily the case; Ayatollah Khomeini, no less, had issued a startlingly enlightened fatwa in the eighties, declaring that gender reassignment surgery was a perfectly acceptable practice.
Omar said, “For a heroin addict lying in an alley, who knows? But for this, I think he acts like he doesn't notice. Why make te-rouble?”
Martin pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. A male paramedic had an excuse to play dumb, but what happened when a female doctor examined the patient more closely? Notwithstanding Khomeini's ruling, there was no guarantee that a man who took oestrogen and put on an evening gown was going to sail through the segregated medical system without igniting some form of commotion."
4 out of 5
http://gregegan.net/BORDER/Complete/Border.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)