Horrible.

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KitemanSA
Posts: 6179
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 3:05 pm
Location: OlyPen WA

Re: Horrible.

Post by KitemanSA »

DeltaV wrote:Can't resist cross-linking this with the Skynet thread.

I read a sci-fi short story in the 1970s or 80s about a robot/AI traffic cop who pulls some guy over and charges him with a minor traffic violation, then, by "...the authority of the Overpopulation Act of 1990..." (or something like that), pronounces sentence on the perp and proceeds to vaporize him with a ray gun.

Anybody remember the title/author?
I remember a similar scenario but there was no vaporization. It was a Larry Niven story set in the early days of the Known Space universe where Gil "the arm" Hamilton was a member of the Amalgamated Regional Militias (ARM) (UN police force). The violator wasn't vaporized, he was harvested for organ transplants.

paperburn1
Posts: 2484
Joined: Fri Jun 19, 2009 5:53 am
Location: Third rock from the sun.

Re: Horrible.

Post by paperburn1 »

I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

zapkitty
Posts: 267
Joined: Fri Apr 09, 2010 8:13 pm

Re: Horrible.

Post by zapkitty »

KitemanSA wrote:I remember a similar scenario but there was no vaporization.... The violator wasn't vaporized, he was harvested for organ transplants.
Actually, there was a vaporization related to a traffic ticket...

Storywise, the major source of transplant organs, and thus life extension in that society at that time, was convicted criminals. In a description of the harvesting process the first organ removed is the brain, which is promptly vaporized so the criminal can be declared officially dead.

Harvesting then proceeds.

The core tech behind the the story wouldn't fly today, what with current stem cell advances and artificial organ printing, but it served at the time for a cautionary tale of the lengths a society as a whole could go to gain access to longer lives. Too many citations got you into the "organ banks"... in pieces.

JoeP
Posts: 523
Joined: Sat Jun 25, 2011 5:10 am

Re: Horrible.

Post by JoeP »

Ah, I think I read the Niven tale as well. What a gruesome future.

I recall another irony in those stories that there were thousands of very rich 20th and 21st century people that froze their bodies in an attempt to get to some point in the future where a cure for aging could be applied, and they could thus become immortal. However the advanced organ harvesting society of the future instead viewed these frozen ancestors as yet another good source of spare parts that could be utilized once the legal protections around their use could be changed.

DeltaV
Posts: 2245
Joined: Mon Oct 12, 2009 5:05 am

Re: Horrible.

Post by DeltaV »

KitemanSA wrote:I remember a similar scenario but there was no vaporization. It was a Larry Niven story set in the early days of the Known Space universe where Gil "the arm" Hamilton was a member of the Amalgamated Regional Militias (ARM) (UN police force). The violator wasn't vaporized, he was harvested for organ transplants.
I also had it conflated in my memory with Niven's organ banks, but I'm pretty sure the perp was vaporized on the spot.

DeltaV
Posts: 2245
Joined: Mon Oct 12, 2009 5:05 am

Re: Horrible.

Post by DeltaV »

Can't access, not a subscriber to ZIA.

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