Posted by Per Sundfeldt on February 24, 1997 at 09:22:57:
In Reply to: Internet prefigured in Vance? posted by Parsifal Pankarow on February 23, 1997 at 22:11:58:
>Parsifal Pankarow posted the following article in the Vance Info BBS
>
>Mr. Vance published the book in 1964. I have no recollection of whether, in the early 1960s, any sort of computer network existed on which these kinds of searches could have been made.
I have certainly thought of the resemblance too, but there is actually nothing in that passage that informs us that Zaum's setup is part of a network. It might be of course, but it might also be a stand alone system loaded with a (in this case recently updated) database (consisting of a googolplex bytes). Zaum makes an annotation that presumably would be accessible to other users, but again, it might be for his own sake only.
When I reread _The Moon Moth_ (1961) these days, it always amuses me to compare Vance's description of the dispatching and reception of the "space-grams" to e-mail. There are eerie resemblances, with even a modem-like "sputter" or "hiss" that Thissell hears when he communicates with his superior.
"Trans-space transmission time varied unpredictably. Sometimes the message snapped through in micro-seconds; sometimes it wandered through unknowable regions for hours; and there were several authenicated examples om messages being received before they had been transmitted."
I too have received e-mail before it was sent, according to the headers.