(Edit: the giveaway referred to in the title has finished.)
Some of you will be familiar with the "wirehead problem" in the context of superintelligent machines; for those who aren't, the science blogger Tim Tyler has posted a couple of youtube videos about it. I find this topic very interesting, and I've been trying to find out if it has appeared anywhere in science fiction. As far as I'm aware, the only "wireheading" that's been portrayed has involved drugs and the human brain, not advanced machines. Does anyone here know of any instances of it in science fiction, be it in novels or short stories? I'd be surprised if there isn't at least one short story, in Interzone or something.
Now for my little plug. I'm a speculative-fiction author who's recently published two novels, and the second of these features (amongst other things) the wirehead problem; I'm interested, therefore, to know if I'm the first writer to cover it. Anyone who wants to see more information about my writing can pop over to my blog at Farcical Speculative Fiction. And I can announce that from the 15th to the 19th of this month, the Kindle versions can be downloaded for free![]()