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this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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Someone help me out please. Who was the 90s sci-fi author who predicted actors would go away and all movies would be made using cgi /ai? She had characters in the book, watching movies starring Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne, as detectives solving crimes (and so on). She also predicted "ractors", people who act in front of a camera, so a computer can use their motion and expressions to animate a character on screen in real time.
My feeble brain, I swear... In any case, thanks to her, knew this day was coming. Gonna be a wild ride though.
According to Le Chat,
I haven’t read it and the Wikipedia article doesn’t seem to mention virtual actors, so it could be wrong. At least it didn’t hallucinate a fake book.
It just cited the wrong Neal Stephenson book, so not way off.
Great book, eh. So many interesting ideas presented in there.
https://archive.is/ZTU90
The Atlantic | Neal Stephenson’s Most Stunning Prediction
The sci-fi legend coined the term metaverse. But he was most prescient about our AI age. By Matteo Wong
William Gibson
Oh snap, thanks - I was mixing up The Diamond Age with another book, yes. Ractors are from Stephenson, but I also had another author's books in my head. See? Feeble mind. There's still another woman author I need to track down and re-read here.
Aha! I found it --
Remake by Connie Willis
https://www.worldswithoutend.com/novel.asp?ID=86
Great book, well worth reading still.
I asked Perplexity with “What is the scifi book from the 90s that had “ractors,” where a person would act in front of a camera and a computer would animate a CG model?”and got (what other commenters are saying) is the correct answer: