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Ahead! - a story by Ian Watson




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Ahead! home
a short story by Ian Watson
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Foreword
Ahead! first appeared in Interzone in May 1995, and was reprinted in
the benefit anthology The Best of Interzone in 1997. My immediate
stimulus for the story was an article by Charles Platt in an earlier
issue of Interzone about how he has signed up to have his own head
frozen. Personally I feel a bit dubious about this freezing of neomorts
(the opposite of neonates, I suppose) -- or, on a smaller budget,
decapitated heads -- to wish upon the future, supposing that the
power or funding doesn't fail in the interim and supposing our
descendants can unfreeze these bequests from the past and can
reverse whatever brought death. Oh it's a grand old dream, going
back to the time of the Pharaohs, not forgetting all those mummified
cats -- but what might the future decide to do with us? Still, there's
Charles five hundred years ahead laughing his head off at me as he
operates a mining machine on Pluto and leads a rich VR fantasy
life...




Ahead!
1: The Head Race

There's an old saying: it'll cost you an arm and a leg.
For me the cost amounted to two arms, two legs, and a torso. Everything
below the neck, in fact. Thus my head and my brain would survive until
posterity. How I pitied people of the past who were dead forever. How I
pitied my contemporaries who were too blind to seize the chance of
cryogenic preservation.

Here we were on the threshold of potential immortality. How could I not

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Ahead! - a story by Ian Watson