X-Message-Number: 557
Subject: Re: cryonics: #553
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 91 09:48:10 PST
From: David Krieger <dkrieger%>

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  Cryonics Mailing List - Nov 27 1991

    #553 - Re: Scary Story [Stewart]

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  Message: #553 - Re: Scary Story
  Message-Subject: CRYONICS
  Date: Wed, 27 Nov 91 16:33:16 CST
  From: Brian Stewart <nicmad!madnix!blupe>

      Incidentally, even though in "A World Out of Time" the
  "corpsicles" weren't broken up for parts, in [Niven's] Known Space
  stories some were.  I can't recall the exact story that it was
  mentioned in, but I believe it was in his ARM collection.

The story was "The Defenseless Dead," and it was published in "The Long ARM
of Gil Hamilton".

  P.S.:  As far as murder stories go, they would probably follow a
  formula such as this:  the hero is either a back up copy or
  simply a copy of the murdered.  Someone has, through extremely
  interesting logistics, murdered all of the other copies and/or
  back up copies of the individual.  The hero would then be working
  to find out who the murderer is, all the time wondering if he
  would be next.  (The author could put the twist on the story that
  the murderer is, in fact, one of the person's *other* copies, of
  course....)
                                      Brian A. Stewart.
------------------
This exact story has already been written:  "The Phantom of Kansas" by John
Varley, available in his collection "The Persistence Of Vision."  The back-
up process is not cryonic in nature.  The motive of the murderer (another
copy of the victim, as you suggest), is that, in Varley's society only one
individual with a given set of genes is allowed to be alive at one time...
the murderer, a copy inadvertently created, has to eradicate the "original"
in order to survive.
					dk
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       -- "Yours truly and sign it!" | Dave Krieger
Views expressed are not those        | Internet: dkrieger%
of Paramount Pictures Corp., RAND,   | "How can you be in two places at once
or the author's Mommy...             |  when you're not anywhere at all?"
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  Look for the Dave Krieger interview in issue NUMBER SIX of MONDO 2000!!

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