Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Mini review: "Timestealer" by Steve Stanton

This short story reminded me a bit of Philip K. Dick's "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (the inspiration for the movie "Total Recall"). Steve Stanton's short story is about a man that earns his living selling other people's memories and experiences, after stealing them. You can live any kind of experience you want, you can be anyone you want. But the person who trully lived it won't remember it. The short story talks about ethics and the condition of human race. Reading it I could imagine how the world would look like if this thing would be possible. Because aren't we all wished at least once to be somebody else?

Quote:
"First tell me who really is going to miss five minutes of mental process? People waste more than that standing at a transit stop or meditating on the toilet. Some people are so drugged they forego higher cerebral functions for most of the day. A culture with no respect for time can well afford to lose an inconsequential fraction to timestealers like me. If God had meant our thoughts and feelings to be private he would not have allowed the monitoring technology to develop..."

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