[ExI] Jack Williamson story

[Keith Henson]

*Long* ago, this email list was one of the more interesting places on
the net for new ideas.

Nanotechnology, AI, uploading plus more philosophical arguments than
anyone could want.

But not long ago I accidentally found where a good number of the ideas
we thought were new and important were presented in a SF story by Jack
Williamson in the early 70s, about 15 years before they were
reinvented on the Extropian list.  If any of you want to look into it,
it’s around page 144 in _The Power of Blackness_.  Spoiler since I
doubt anyone will actually try to find it.  The story gets to a point
where one of a pair has uploaded (transposition) and the other refuses
it.   The one who has uploaded has left a body behind which can and is
revived and the pair goes on in the real world so the story can
continue while a copy of one of them lives the sweet life in a
simulation.

I don’t think I read this story when it came out.  That period of my
life I was not reading much SF, too busy.  And, at the time, SF that
didn’t include space colonies just wasn’t interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Williamson