If You Don't Mind

By Guy Inchbald

Each of these stories takes a different mind to a different place. The inner spaces of the mind remain far less explored than the outer spaces of the cosmos, far less informed by modern science. Today's spaceships, robots and computers are just echoes of our outer reality. They become far deeper and more intriguing when they begin to echo our inner realities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Guy Inchbald
• Release date: Oct 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311146236

Guy Inchbald

Guy Inchbald was born in London, England in 1952 and has been moving around the country ever since. He went to more schools and universities than he can remember and has been at one time or another an aircraft enthusiast, student of philosophy, trainee architect, freelance designer, electronics engineer, parent, businessman, technical author, amateur geometer, parish councillor and general nuisance. It is with this last that he has finally found his niche. You, my friend, are his latest victim. Enjoy.

Book preview

If You Don't Mind

Three SF short stories, from cyberpunk to the deepest reaches of inner and outer space

Guy Inchbald

Copyright © Guy Inchbald 2013

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ISBN 9781311146236

Published by Guy Inchbald

Contents

Introduction

The Ghost of Ada Lovelace

Bladeship

Counterpoint

Introduction

Each of these stories takes a different mind to a different place. The inner spaces of the mind remain far less explored than the outer spaces of the cosmos, far less informed by modern science. Today's spaceships, robots and computers are just echoes of our outer reality. They become far deeper and more intriguing when they begin to echo our inner realities.

The Ghost of Ada Lovelace is not wholly fictional. Charles Babbage’s unfinished Difference Engine, his patronage by the Government and others, Ada Countess of Lovelace’s theoretical work on what we would nowadays call computer programming and the fancy we find in Leibniz’ Monadology are all historical fact. A complete and working reproduction of a Babbage engine is to be found in the Science Museum, London, England.

Bladeship is overtly more about the implications of modern quantum mechanics. The alien mind in this story does not take centre stage, but it is there and we must wonder at its feelings.

Counterpoint is a revised, expanded and I like to think improved version of an earlier story freely available on the World Wide Web. How do you answer the unanswerable? Here I set it to music.

The Ghost of Ada Lovelace

A few weeks after the funeral a large parcel arrived in the post. I recognised her handwriting. She must have prepared it some time ago, and left instructions to forward it upon her death. The parcel contained