Transhuman Histories
"It was a time of wealth and adventure, of transformation and terror. It was the age of Transhuman Space."
-- David L. Pulver, Transhuman SpaceWell, it's an age of transhuman space. There are others, emergent from the same issues and matrices that create Dave Pulver's newest gameverse. Because the questions of transhumanity are, in essence, the questions of humanity, which are as old as the hills, even if the technologies that pose them so starkly have yet to be developed. Any such development can lead us into the same transformations, and the same terrors -- in the past of our imagination, as well as our postulated future. Here, then are four other ages; four other transhuman histories.
"For he says I am a maker of gods; and because I make new gods and do not believe in the old ones, he indicted me for the sake of these old ones, as he says.
I understand, Socrates; it is because you say the daimon keeps coming to you. . . . Why, they even laugh at me and say I am crazy when I say anything in the assembly about divine things and foretell the future to them. And yet there is not one of the things I have foretold that is not true; but they are jealous of all such men as you and I are. However, we must not be disturbed, but must come to close quarters with them.
For the Athenians, I fancy, are not much concerned, if they think a man is clever, provided he does not impart his clever notions to others; but when they think he makes others to be like himself, . . .This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: March 15, 2002
Copyright © 2002 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.
