Cyborgs

I've been annoying people for a long time. OK, that sentence can stand on its own haha. But specifically I've been telling people that I hope to live long enough to see a world where prosthetic arms and legs are available en masse to people as upgrades or fixes against old age. Of course, one part of me wants to grow old, wear a dirty old mac and flash at young cashiers while stealing boiled sweets and resisting arrest, but the other half dearly wants to be some codgery old fucker with robocop style limbs running round causing even more trouble (still pissing himself in public). I used to have long conversations with people about where the line is between person and machine, and where you could go removing stuff and still think of someone as a person. LImbs are often missing by accident or injury so clearly you can lop those fuckers off and presumably replace them, in fact I saw an article that this year some dude got 2 arms that he has some control over by thought. But then how much more can you take away. Could you get to just the head at some point in the future, but then what about just a brain, connected to shit. Is it still a person if it can't experience anything via the normal senses? These conversations were always part Karl Pilkington and part Arthur C Clarke. Like, I find it genuinely interesting, even though the reality is this is never going to be available to the plebs at reasonable cost and I'm sure there are many technical reasons why you have to stop before its just a brain in a fishtank. But artificial hearts work, blood just carries oxygen to the brain, so who knows, why not?

anyway I saw this
io9.com/5828294/machine-man-is-the-cybor...uve-been-waiting-for

seems to be along similar lines, won't be surprised if the twist (hinted at the bottom and mentioning a possible film) is getting to a point where you're like, stick my brain in a tank, no more standing round in bus queues taking shit for me, but the point of this interminably long and nonsensical post is this


Anyone know any good cyborg books that specifically explore the development of the period between man / prosthetics and some extrapolated--ad-absurdum end point as discussed above. A lot of the classic sci fi I've read focus more on the "after cyborgs are around", I suppose "Man Plus" (which was great) focussed more on the protagonists struggle with his new reality.

But feel free to share if you've got any pearlers you want to recommend

Well no books, but Deus Ex Human Revolution is awesome on this front.

For "after cyborgs are around", my pick would be Battle Angel Alita (Gunnm) manga, which is incredible.

Machine Man is a great book. I recommend anything by Max Barry.

There's quite a bit of what you're talking about in the book, people becoming accustomed to voluntary replacements, and even creating a market for them.

Thinking about Man Plus still makes me cross my legs.