From: Michael Straight <straight@email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: (urth) Re: Digest urth.v030.n132
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 12:57:09 

On Sun, 24 Jun 2001, James Jordan wrote:

>          Wolfe may have had these experiments a bit in mind, but he's 
> mainly dealing with the Christian sacrament of Holy Communion

I would have put it the other way around.  Wolfe is probably also refering
to Holy Communion, but the idea of getting memories from somehow consuming
someone else's brains/RNA is an old sci-fi/fantasy trope, the RNA versions
have generally been inspired by that planarial worm experiment, I think.  
(Larry Niven used injections of RNA to allow people to learn new skills in
A World Out of Time -- that's the only one I can remember off the top of
my head.)

(Of course, the original fantasy/magical versions of this idea may have
themselves been inspired by the Eucharist...)

-Rostrum



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