On a far less maudlin note

[textualdeviance]

I'm sure one of my SFF-savvy friends will know this:

Has there ever been a book/movie/etc. in which it's posited that ghosts are actually holographic projections of a flash-memory stored version of ourselves that gets uploaded somewhere when we die?

I'm thinking along the lines of our brain contents and basic physical image being stored in a cloud somewhere (a literal cloud, if one wants to use iconic heaven imagery) and then called up in virtual form when our meatspace hard drive crashes. And because the memory form in question is read/write, it can use that existing snapshot as a building block from which to create new actions and experiences, even if our meat machines aren't there to give us proper sensory input.

I know similar ideas have been used in terms of uploading exisitng people to new bodies (Old Man's War, I believe, does this, and then there's always the Cylon rebirth business) but I wasn't sure if it's been used to explain the metaphysical.

Comments

[grail76.livejournal.com]

If I remember correctly The Bohr Maker http://www.amazon.com/The-Bohr-Maker-Linda-Nagata/dp/1937197026/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330716966&sr=1-9
has a character who's in that situation.

Kindle ed. is under $5.00

[purplecat]

I have an itchy sense that I've come across this idea somewhere, but the details are escaping me. Doctor Who has definitely come close to the idea on a couple of occasions, most notably Astrid's final appearance in Voyage of the Damned and it wouldn't surprise me at all if the feeling of familiarity is from one of the early 90s Dr Who novels, since they were very fond of ideas related to cyberspace and virtual reality and so on.

[mrdorbin.livejournal.com]

Also the Library episodes, but they only lasted briefly.

[purplecat]

I thought of those, but the link to ghosts, per se, was never really made. Whereas Astrid is all see-through and glittery at the end of Voyage, they're definitely riffing of ghostly imagery there.

[thefirstalicat.livejournal.com]

There's definitely a bunch of stories with this metaphysical outlook, dating back at the very least to the 1970s. I'm trying to think of specific titles, though the only one that comes to mind at the moment is an early GRRM story, "Song for Lya," in which a young man who cannot deal with the death of his lover becomes a sort of "memory junkie" because the technology allows him to access incidents in his love's life in real time chunks. From, I think, about 1976, and very poignant. I'll check some anthologies, see if I can remember more titles.

[thefirstalicat.livejournal.com]

Checked with my big bro on this question, Texty, because he's a longtime sf/f fan who knows more than I ever will about it. Here's what he had to say:

Your friend should read "Surface Detail" by Iain M. Banks which has some of the best virtual personality stuff in recent memory. Uploading a personality for safekeeping and later retrieval has become a pretty common trope (or techie wet-dream) in recent years. I don't think I've seen one with ghosts as holographic images but there could be such a thing.

So there's a starting place. Chris also recommends you check Greg Egan's work for similar.

Hope that helps!