Asimov, “The Last Question.” Science Fiction Quarterly Nov. 1956. Deals with the three-stage evolution of
H. sapiens sapiens from (1) our current state, to (2) bodies with free-roaming minds, tended by
machines and, finally, to (3) minds merged with the cosmic computer; parallel development of
computers also handled. “The Last Question” is how to reverse entropy; the answer is, Creation
by the ultimate computer-god.

John T. Sladek. The Müller-Fokker Effect. London:
Hutchinson, 1970. A major character finds himself “digitalized” and trapped inside a computer. While “entombed” within the machine, he considers, among other things, the definition of the noun “man.”

A.C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey (but not the film) has ET minds stored in spaceships (1968).

Fritz Lang‘s film METROPOLIS shows “essence” (my term) of Maria used to animate Robot Maria in
some sort of soul transfer (except human Maria is unchanged).

Cf. and contrast M. Coney’s Celestial Steam Locomotive, B. Daley’s Tron, F. Saberhagen and R. Zelazny’s Coils, J. Varley’s “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank”.

What it looks like to me is that you wrote the first novel/story of this type that actually referenced real-world
hardware/software in a nuts-and-bolts way instead of saying ‘. . . and then they put their minds in a computer.’

I’d exclude Noman, who had no backup storage if all his bodies died, and LORD OF LIGHT, in which minds are hot-swapped into new blank bodies but not stored. And Pohl’s second Heechee book was 1980, which is more like a tie.

Boris and Arkady Strugatsky had a botched attempt at an upload in a 1961 book, but not much Russian SF made it over here.

When you used it in Software, uploading was a mint-new, relatively unscratched idea.

Here’s a Portuguese Edgar Pera film “Who is the Master?” showing Robert Anton Wilson explaining what he means by “Reality is what you can get away with.”

http://www.geocities.com/athens/academy/6422/rev1210.html

“Felix’s former lover, the film star Iolanthe, is dead, but Merlin decides to use her as a prototype in a project to create a mechanical being, aiming to recreate her appearance, memories and personality.”

He found a 1966 comic with a guy who lives in a robot body. His name is NoMan.

“NoMan was a human mind housed in an robotic body. The mind, that of Anthony Dunn, had been transferred into the robotic form as his human body passed away. NoMan had several spare bodies, and he could electronically transfer his mind from one body to the next virtually instantaneously. He often went on missions with a spare body stashed in whatever vehicle he was travelling in.”

NoMan! Or perhaps, echoing Seinfeld, I should say (clenching my fists) “Newman!”

Anyway, Professor Turney, maybe I can still say Software was the first novel with people uploading their minds into robot bodies!

(1) An entry on Peter’s interesting blog explainging why he disbelieves the “Heroic Theory of Scientific Development.”

(2) Wikipedia, no less, lists other authors who mention uploading human minds into computers. In this entry my Software is indeed mentioned—so I’m not completely full of bull. I”m roughly contemporaneous with Pohl’s Heechee series, but I’m definiteley preceded by Roger Zelazny’s 1968 Lord of Light in which, just like in my Wetware, people save their minds as electronic data and load them into fresh tank-grown meat bodies

Another precursor is Detta är verkligheten (This is reality), 1968, by the philosopher Bertil Mårtensson, in which people become programs in a giant VR computation.

To my way of thinking, uploading into a mainframe VR is a less interesting notion of uploading than the one in which people uplaod into individual computer minds operating real bodies in the real world, as I do in Software. Although I haven’t read Zelazny’s series, it sounds as if his people don’t get new robot bodies, just new meat bodies, and their minds are, as with Mårtensson, stored in the giant global computers endemic to pre-1980s SF.

By the way in Pohl’s Heechee series, we also have a person whose mind is uploaded into a mainframe computer.

So I’m thinking maybe I can claim that Software was the first novel in which people uploaded their minds into individual robot bodies. The first desktop uploads, if you will. This was a farfetched enough notion in 1979-1980 that I actually had the robots’ computer mind housed in an ice-cream truck following the robots around. We had trouble imagining how small computers were about to get.

So, okay, I’ll tone down my I-invented-uploading claim in my Psipunk essay—but only a little.

I’ve noticed that the more successful public intellectuals are the ones who simply keep insisting that they invented ground-breaking stuff until eventually people begin believing them. My windbag role models.

Once again: “Reality is what you can get away with.”

Here are some more references to uploading in fiction:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_transfer_in_fiction

“I had the feeling at time that no one had previously made the mind/body software/hardware analogy.”

John C. Lilly’s Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer (1968) makes this analogy:

http://www.futurehi.net/docs/Metaprogramming.html

Peter.

Actually I have a feeling there may be a much better pre-1979 instance of the idea of a person uploading their mind into a computer. Can anyone ferret it out?

I got into this line of thought in 1979 while in Heidelberg, writing the “Robots and Souls” section of my non-fiction book INFINITY AND THE MIND.

There were several things in that section I was excited about. As well as uploading, I was excited about the notoin that you had the mind’s software (data, agents, routines) and really any old hardware to put it on, then there need NOT in fact be any need to worry about the ethereal “soul”.

And, mystically inclined (and contrary) person that I am, I was NOT saying this and meaning that the world is mechanicstic and there aren’t any souls. No I was saying that the the soul (which experientialy everyone knows they have) is unitary and omnipresent. We all share the same I AM, the same glow. Even the sticks and stones among us.

I’ve always liked, in this context, the Zen Buddhist answer the the question “What is the mind?”, to wit: “The universal rain moistens all creatures.”