Uploading a human’s consciousness to a computer is a tricky proposition. Is it possible to give a machine the free will of one’s consciousness or is it just programmed to perfectly mimic a person? But what if all someone wanted was a digital copy that could keep their minds alive?
A lot of speculative fiction has toyed with the idea of making death a temporary inconvenience. The fantasy genre has magical spells and spiritual reincarnation, but sci-fi has to make do with very advanced medicine and uploading brains to computers. Some solutions are less elegant than others.
The virtual mind is an artificial intelligence, computer program, or hologram designed to reflect the behavior of someone who has died. Sometimes it’s a fully conscious continuation of the dearly departed subjects, sometimes it’s just a standard AI assistant with a personality. If the subject is still alive within the program, they may be less than thrilled with their permanent captivity in the machine. This essentially gives the writer the power to bring a character back from the dead in a helpful supporting role. They can act as mentors to the other characters, drive the machines while the heroes do their thing, or just hang out as friendly faces in an otherwise cold world. This is similar, but distinctly different from something like an uploaded consciousness iteration of the afterlife. The virtual ghost might live on after death, but they won’t go much further, they stay exactly where they were.
One of the most popular examples of this trope comes in stories about Superman. The original superhero who was sent from his home planet Krypton and grew up on Earth had parents whom he cherished all his life. But even though Ma and Pa Kent are healthy and admirable guardians, Kal-El still gets occasional tutoring from the father he never knew. In the Richard Donner Superman movies, Clark’s father Jor-El and other elders from the departed planet Krypton appear as holograms to guide him in his quests. This has become a recurring concept throughout the character’s media appearances. Russel Crowe’s Jor-El appears as a handy hologram and acts like a video game NPC tutorial in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. The character appears in full AI hologram in the Arrowverse, played by Angus Macfadyen. While it was an invention of cinematic Superman stories, it also popped up in the comics. Jor-El is probably the first example of the virtual ghost.
The earliest example of this figure of speech is probably Cordwainer Smith’s 1964 novella ‘The Dead Lady of Clown Town’. The story is part of Smith’s landmark Instrumentality of humanity series, which depicts a utopian society that has led to human complacency and an underbelly of horrific slavery. A caste of genetically enhanced animals called subhumans are treated as disposable property, leading several humans to try to escape. With the help of a therapist and a telepath, the subhumans try in vain to revolutionize. The eponymous Dead Lady is a virtual ghost named Lady Panc Ashash, a “personality image” of a once powerful member of the government. Ashash predicts the future, knowing in advance that the revolution will fail, but her tortured heroes will inspire generations to come.
doctor who enjoy using this trope too. Season 4’s iconic “Silence in the Library” episode was the second of two outstanding two-part contributions from Steven Moffat before he took over the show. It introduced the archaeologists, led by River Song, who are investigating the mysterious closure of the titular library. While there, they discover one of the most gruesome aliens in the history of the series, the Vashta Nerada. As the archaeologists are killed one by one, The Doctor discovers that their suits capture “data ghosts,” a kind of neural snapshot that preserves their personality for a short time after death. This means that each victim becomes a virtual ghost as soon as they die, but that’s not all. The entire library turns out to be managed by a locally maintained virtual ghost, who can permanently upload all their ghosts to the system and keep them nearby. This idea has been used several times, such as Testimony from the Season 10 Christmas special.
The virtual mind is a method of keeping characters alive and a way of making everyday AI more interesting. The concept could be the solution to a controversial death in a franchise, but it might as well be a way to spice up long spaceflights. The idea of consciousness hanging in machines forever will always be full of interesting questions, and few works feel the need to go into it with this trope. The power of speculative fiction to evade death can be used in all sorts of interesting new directions in storytelling.
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