{"id":11687,"date":"2026-07-29T15:42:47","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T20:42:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/?p=11687"},"modified":"2026-07-29T15:42:47","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T20:42:47","slug":"golden-age-sf-fanservice-in-the-ghost-in-the-shell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2026\/07\/29\/golden-age-sf-fanservice-in-the-ghost-in-the-shell\/","title":{"rendered":"Golden Age SF fanservice in The Ghost in the Shell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nIn case you never realised it, Shirow Masamune is an enormous science fiction nerd and he has put a lot of references to classic esseff in his stories, as seen in episode 4 of The Ghost in the Shell<\/cite>.
\n\"A<\/p>\n

\nGilbert Gosseyn is the hero of A. E. Van Vogt’s The World of Null-A<\/a><\/cite> (1948) and sequels. At the novel’s start he finds out his memories are false and he is not who he thought he is, then finds out his superior mutant brain allows him to teleport. He also dies repeatedly and is ressurrected into new bodies.The Gosseyn here is the child kidnapping victim who had his personality stolen and uploaded into robots, killing him in the process. This is called “ghost dubbing”, ghosts being slang for consciousness\/the soul.\n<\/p>\n

\n(The World of Null-A<\/cite> was one of my favourite sf novels as a child and influenced me so much that I still find myself saying “the map is not the land<\/a>“, not to mention trying to “imprint” a section of nearby floor to try and teleport to.)\n<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\nAdam Link is the robot protagonist of Eando Binder’s I, Robot<\/a><\/cite> (1939) and sequels. Eando Binder was the pen name for Earl and Otto Binder, the latter of whom also wrote for DC Comics as well as Fawcett. Link is an intelligent robot suspected of having murdered his creator, who actually died in an accident. He ends up defending himself in court for it. This was one of the first robot stories that treated it not as a menace to be destroyed. Here Link and Adam are two other kidnap victims and the ones who together with Gosseyn set the plot in motion that got Section Nine involved.\n<\/p>\n

\"Batou<\/p>\n

\nNow this is an incredible deep cut. Professor Jameson<\/a> is the hero of a series of pulp sf stories written by Neil. R. Jones in Amazing Stories<\/cite> from 1931, with the last, unpublished in his lifetime stories appearing only last year! Jameson has his body cryogenically frozen after his death and in the far future is resurrected by aliens and given a full cyborg body. In The Ghost in the Shell<\/cite> the company president who is responsible for the kidnapping and ghost dubbing of children for use in his robots. He is just a brain in a simple metal case, unlike most cyborgs in the series, who are as human looking as possible.\n<\/p>\n

\nSeeing these references, some of which I only know from having read The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction<\/cite> religiously growing up, is amazing. Would be great if they lead to some interest in the original stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you never realised it, Shirow Masamune is an enormous science fiction nerd and he has put a lot of references to classic esseff in his stories, as seen in episode 4 of The Ghost in the Shell. Gilbert Gosseyn is the hero of A. E. Van Vogt’s The World of Null-A (1948) and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anime","category-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11689,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11687\/revisions\/11689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}