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The Last Evolution, by John W Campbell Jr. (1932)
- michael-ax 4mo ago> John W. Campbell, Jr.’s "The Last Evolution" (first published in Amazing Stories, August 1932) is a highly influential piece of early hard science fiction. It represents an important conceptual milestone: it is *one of the earliest stories to explore the idea of a technological singularity*, the peaceful retirement of humanity by its own creations, and the evolution of machines into forms of pure energy. not on our timeline, but.. still a fun/quaint read.
- Contortion 4mo agoFor anyone who isn't aware, the same author who wrote the short story the film The Thing was based on.
- jauntywundrkind 4mo agoI've spoken with F-3 and F-4 and they both actually seemed pretty chipper about the whole thing. They also give their thanks to the Internet Archive for doing so much to preserve the spark, for keeping the lightcone alive for so so long! Also they say to Get The Fuck Off Twitter what the hell are you fools still doing there on that lightcone-less dark site?
- ViktorRay 4mo agoFascinating that this story was published in 1932 and it mentions “atomic explosives” and energy that is derived from atoms.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- ayongpm 4mo agoReally fascinating read. I ended up typesetting it in Typst. You can grab the PDF or check out the source code here: PDF: https://aaron.beago-cirius.ts.net/media/typst/campbell_last_evolution.pdf https://aaron.beago-cirius.ts.net/media/typst/campbell_last_... Source (.typ): https://aaron.beago-cirius.ts.net/media/typst/campbell_last_evolution.typ https://aaron.beago-cirius.ts.net/media/typst/campbell_last_...
- NetMageSCW 4mo agoOne of my favorite authors for his Arcot Trilogy.