No Woman Born

Moore, C. L. "No Woman Born." Astounding Dec. 1944. Coll. The Best of C. L. Moore. Lester del Rey, ed. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975. New York: Ballantine, "A Del Rey Book" (Afterword by CLM), 1976. Rpt. Human Machines (q.v. at link or under Anthologies). Science Fiction: The Science Fiction Research Association Anthology. Patricia S. Warrick et al., eds. New York: Harper, 1988.

A great entertainer's personality and talents are transferred into a mechanical body so they will not be lost with her death. Embodiment in the mechanism will affect that personality and talents (contrast numerous narratives, where uploading, downloading, and/or transferring to different bodies, or cyberspace, isn't problematic).

See under Literary Criticism the TMG essays by A. Gordon and A. H. Jones.[[1]] Cf. and contrast "Masks."

Discussed with great insight in Thomas L. Wymer's “Feminism, Technology, and Art in C. L. Moore’s 'No Woman Born'.” ‘’Extrapolation’’ 47.1 (Spring 2006): 51-65.

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Reprinted also in Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture, an instructive context in which to consider it.

Expanded by RDE, 10May19, 12May21; 4Jun23