Immortality is a subject of fiction well beyond the boundaries of any particular genre, but sci-fi has its unique methods of ducking the reaper. One of the most common and most interesting solutions for the issue of entropy is the hotly anticipated ability to upload one’s living consciousness to a highly advanced piece of technology. This concept has a rich history and several fascinating permutations across the science fiction medium.
The old uploading one’s brain to a computer to escape the nightmarish fate of the human body trick seems like a no-brainer. The effects of age are almost exclusively negative, and even the most pleasant death is packed with mystery and fear. This trope suggests the possibility of hooking up the failing body to a bunch of massive computer banks and somehow transferring the perceptual reality of the person into a machine. This is, as far as we know, impossible. Consciousness is a function of the brain which can’t just be transferred from its mortal casing. This is similar, but not identical to circumstances like The Matrix, in which a person is allowed to inhabit a computerized life simulation while their brain remains in their body. This isn’t a full upload of consciousness, it’s just state-of-the-art virtual reality.
Other works involve building an artificial intelligence that perfectly mirrors the intelligence, memories, and personality of a once-living person. This too isn’t quite the full brain upload, but it is close. John C. Campbell’s 1930 short story “The Infinite Brain” was one of the first examples of that idea. The story centers around Anton Des Roubles, a brilliant inventor who has created the machine capable of perfectly mirroring his brain’s electrical impulses. The difference is in the fate of Des Roubles himself. The man is dead, he’s just left a helpful robot that’s programmed to replace him. It’s closer in tone to a disembodied clone, rather than uploading his living consciousness into an outside source.
A fantastic example of this trope actually comes in the most successful sci-fi movie ever made, James Cameron’s Avatar. The eponymous avatar program isn’t a full consciousness upload, it’s more akin to remote control via neural upload. Hero Jake Sully agrees to leave his body comatose in a high-tech pod while his consciousness pilots the body of a lab-grown Na’vi. Jake’s consciousness is only temporarily able to be transferred into his new body, but, the film’s ending does hold an example of the trope. Rather than return to his human body, Jake chooses to use the planet’s religious neural link to fully upload his consciousness to his avatar body. This process leaves his original body behind for good but grants him a new life in a new body. The fact that this system works raises a ton of interesting questions. Does this prove the existence of the “soul” in any metaphysical sense? What good is a body if the mind is free to roam? What is identity in a world where anyone can transfer consciousness as easily as moving houses? Avatar does not meaningfully address any of those questions, but they sure are interesting to think about.
Perhaps a more striking example would be Richard K. Morgan’s 2002 novel Altered Carbon and its 2018 Netflix adaptation. Like many great works of sci-fi, this series starts from a brilliant technological advancement and interrogates its impact on society at large. Almost every person in the future of Morgan’s novel has their consciousness uploaded to a small device called a stack located in their spinal column. This stack contains each person’s very being, allowing their body to act as a transient vessel. Immortality is achieved by slotting the stack into the sleeve of the user’s choice. Age becomes meaningless and true death can only be achieved by destroying a person’s stack. The impact of this concept is the overarching narrative of the franchise, from religious piety forbidding some to engage, to murder mysteries allowing the victim to testify, to a class system only allowing some true immortality. It’s a perfect examination of the trope and one of the most thoughtful works in the genre.
As is so often the case, Charlie Brooker’s seminal sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror has addressed this topic. As the series leans on the dark side, it’s used the concept as a fate worse than death a couple of times. Season 4, Episode 6 “Black Museum” features a couple of examples. The episode tells the tale of a man who allows his comatose wife’s consciousness to share space in his brain, before growing hateful and transferring her to a toy. That episode ends with the reveal that the main character has the same arrangement with her deceased mother. The series’ Christmas special “White Christmas” also uses it as a sci-fi hell, leaving its main character’s consciousness in a millennia-long torture chamber as punishment. Shockingly, however, the series also features one of the most utopian versions of the concept ever conceived of.
Season 3, Episode 4 “San Junipero” is the best episode of Black Mirror for several reasons, but its Earth-moving optimism is its greatest strength. The episode depicts a whirlwind love affair between two young women in the beautiful dreamland of the title. The twist is that San Junipero is a neural immersion VR metaverse for the elderly and infirmed to live out their final days in peace. Those in the simulation have the freedom to let their consciousness enter it for good when they die and the episode deals with that moral quandary. In its conclusion, the loving couple allows themselves to live in bliss forever within the computer. The episode fades out on one of the strongest shots in modern sci-fi.
Uploading one’s brain into the machine is usually a Faustian deal or a fate worse than death, but, sometimes, a creator allows it to be a Heaven on Earth. The uploaded consciousness trope is one of the best in the genre for its moral depth and endless variance.
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