From: Jim Fehlinger (fehlinger@home.com)
Date: Sat Mar 11 2000 - 08:15:12 MST
"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
>
> Disk capacity is an issue, however. Only a PC built after 1985 has the
> storage capacity to house an evil spirit, the minister explained.
In the debased literature of possession which pervades modern
popular culture, which I am familiar with mainly via trashy
made-for-TV movies (such as the _Amityville Horror_ cycle), very
simple appliances, such as lamps, can be possessed. However, serious
students of possession, such as the good clergyman, may well know
better. Of course, the recurring theme of possessed **houses**
may indicate too great a weight of evidence to be so easily
dismissed (;-> ;->).
Speaking of haunted houses -- have you ever read J. G. Ballard's
high-tech take on this theme _The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista_?
It's a story in the wonderful Vermilion Sands sequence, written
during the late 50's and early 60's. Don't let the dates fool
you -- Ballard was heavy into launching the New Wave movement, much
to the irritation of many SF traditionalists. I suspect that
many Extropians react to Ballard the way the SF conservatives did --
there's a deliciously subversive Entropian theme pervading his
work -- a sort of languid resignation to decay and the winding
down of things, which I find strangely compelling, at times.
Part of me resonates strongly to his portrayal of "beach fatigue".
Jim F.
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