This week, Futures is exploring the murky world of mind transference courtesy of In the spaces of strangers by L. P. Lee. An English Eurasian writer based in London,  L. P. Lee splits her work between fiction and screenwriting. You can find out more about her work at her website. Here, she reveals what inspired her latest tale — as ever, it pays to the read the story first.

Writing In the spaces of strangers

The story came about when I started looking into the idea that we’ll one day be able to upload our minds and live outside of the bodies that we were born into. It’s fascinating that there are neuroscientists and start-ups exploring how to turn these ideas into reality.

It makes you wonder how people, with all the baggage that they bring to the table and their varied ways of navigating society, might put this kind of technology to use.

I was curious about how it could play out if people from different backgrounds in British society started transferring across to each other, as opposed to uploading to a computer. It’s a flight of fancy, where brains are bits of machinery that can be emptied and refilled again. In my story, I wanted to explore what could happen in a relationship of power imbalance between two individuals.

Although there’s the potential for mind uploading to move us forward and be the next step in human evolution, possibly it will enable baser, more vampiric instincts too.

This week Futures is delighted to welcome A. J. Lee with her story Remember — a cautionary tale about cryogenics. Here, we discover what inspired this piece — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Remember

Despite the scepticism about cryonics, people have been freezing themselves in the hope of future resuscitation since the mid-1960s. We don’t yet know enough about the human brain to revive these frozen people. And we certainly don’t know enough to create brain-accessible memory storage that mimics real memories. But it seems likely that the two could go hand-in-hand.

Futures is delighted to welcome back Deborah Walker this week with Without access, her story about the need to stay connected. Regular readers will be familiar with Deborah’s work (there are links to her other stories at the foot of this post), but you can find out more about her writing at her website or by following her on Twitter. Here, she reveals the inspiration behind her latest tale — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Without access

I like my phone, but my teenage daughter really likes it. It’s so important to her. Access is everything. When my teenage niece was denied Wi-Fi access on a recent holiday to Croatia (the brochure had promised access), she had a meltdown. For many of the younger generation access to the Internet has become part of their identity.

Concerns about the time we all spend on our electronic devices have recently resurfaced. Are we enslaved to access? What does this mean for our productivity? For our mental health?

It’s not just parents who are concerned. Half of teenagers think they spend too much time on social media. Teenagers also think that parents are spending too much time on their phones. (But let’s gloss over that.)

People can’t seem to stop checking their phones. A recent survey reveals people checking their phones in the most inappropriate situations: during sex (7%), on the toilet (72%) and even during a funeral (11%). Nearly two-thirds of people said they felt anxious when not connected to the Wi-Fi.

I seem to recall that the social-media giants are implanting measure to help us manage these issues, although I don’t recall what those measures are.

These issues inspired my story. I take my teenage hero to a planet where access is denied. A nightmare planet, inhabited by underground dwellers. Bored out of her tiny mind, my hero goes where she shouldn’t go: into the night of the living dead, except the dead aren’t flesh and blood, they are personalities, and they have access to a horrifying amount of data.