Brains in Closets and Bodies on Screens

Lauren Shoemaker:  Welcome to Plugged In: A Women-Centered Science Fiction Book Club podcast. I'm your host, Lauren Shoemaker. In this semi-regular podcast series, we'll explore sub-genres, tropes, history, and current trends of science fiction written by women. Today in our very first episode, we will be discussing “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” by James Tiptree Jr.

You might be pausing and saying, “but Lauren, how does this fit into science fiction written by women?” Because James is a woman! Alice Bradley. Sheldon wrote her science fiction stories under the name James Tiptree Jr., as well as many other pen names. But it wasn't until 1977 that people knew she was a woman.

For the purposes of keeping everything easy to remember in this podcast, I'll just refer to her as Tiptree. In her early adulthood, Tiptree was a graphic artist and painter, and had a pretty solid art career. In 1967, she pivoted to science fiction and soon became a highly decorated author. In 1974, she won the Hugo Award for the girl who was plugged in.

The story exists in a future world that is run by corporations and has made advertising illegal. Instead, all advertisements must exist in the space of the item or package itself. Corporations have pivoted to product placement and what are essentially live streams of celebrities hanging out and having.

The main character, Philadelphia Burke, who is referred to throughout the story as P Burke becomes one of those celebrities after a public suicide attempt, she is swooped up to avoid arrest (because, of course, public suicide is illegal in this future too), and turned into one of those advertising celebrities.

She gets a new body that was grown brainless, weird, right? And has her original body kept in a closet in Carbondale, PA that controls the new body from afar. The new body is named Delphi and has a simple job: have fun, publicly buy things and act like you like the products. All is going well until she falls in love with Paul.

Paul soon learns what Delphi is, and vows to save her from the brain in the closet that is controlling her every move. But in his haste to save the girl he quote unquote, loves. He kills P. Burke's body, which is, as we remember, controlling the body of Delphi and in turn kills Delphi. 

What an interesting plot! When I first read this, I thought it was such an interesting story. I was a junior in college in my very first science fiction class, and I was just learning for the first time about more niche science fiction stories. Now of course, this isn't really niche. It won the Hugo Award, it's huge. But how many people, if you go ask them on the street, have they heard about this story? Probably not many. 

What I wanna talk about today, I'm like really, really excited to talk about this, is this story kind of asks.. One of the main questions that has always drawn me to science fiction is what is the essential quality of a person? Is it the brain or is it the body? And the brain, I mean mind and soul almost. Those kinds of words are all synonymous, sort of, when it comes to talking about this. 

So a little bit of background. I'm sure you've heard about the Ship of Theseus. If not, that's okay. I will explain it. It's basically a paradox that comes from Greek mythology, and it asks the question, if every piece of a ship gets replaced one by one over time, is it still the same ship?

So this can be applied to this story and a lot of other science fiction stories. But to this one in particular, because P. Burke has her body replaced, but her mind is still her, like she's still in Carbondale, thousands of miles away from her body, her new body, I should say. Is that new body Delphi, is that still P. Burke or is it somebody new because there's a new body?

So it's like, is Delphi a new creation or is it still P Burke? That's something that I—these kinds of questions I've always loved to talk about when it comes to science fiction. Personally, I do not think that the existence of a new body signifies a new being, a new individual. I think that because her mind is still the same, and I don't mean the same as in it's acting the same, it's still the same mind, they have not changed the mind in the old body of P. Burke. It's still P. Burke's mind in a new body. Because her mind is still the same, I think that's still the same person. But I'm, but I'm always open to hearing what other people think. So if you think something differently, feel free to leave a comment on this episode and tell me what you think. I'd be more than excited to read it and hear what people have to say. 

But this kind of thing makes me think, if I were to take this into a real life situation. If I look down at my knee right now, I would say “that's my knee. That knee is part of me.” But if my brain were put in another body and I were aware of that, like P. Burke is aware of the fact that she's in a different body, I would, I don't think I would look down and say, “oh yes, that's my knee.” I think I would recognize it as someone else's, or something else's knee, something else's body. So it kind of makes me think like, what's actually the case? Is it P. Burke? Is it Delphi? Is it something else? Is there a third option that I'm not thinking of. It's really interesting.

One of the other things that I really, really wanted to talk about when it came to this story is that they're constantly being observed. These celebrities, like they go out, they go to all these different countries. The main part of the story later on when Paul tries to save, Delphi takes place in Chile, which is crazy. That's so cool. I would love to go to Chile and be a celebrity and buy things. Maybe? But anyway, she's out in Chile. These celebrities that she's friends with, they're out in Chile. They're doing fun things, whatever. She's advertising stuff without pretending. With pretending not to advertise it. 

And she's hyper visible. People are all around the world buying the things that she buys. She's being live streamed, essentially. There are people in their homes with 3D versions of Delphi and her friends. And this part was actually really interesting thinking about hyper visibility, how the people that would live stream, essentially, all of the celebrities, how they could blow up—there was no pixel issue. So like in regular, if someone were to give you a video or an image, there's a pixel size, there's an amount of pixels that are in it, and so you, if you blow it up too big, it looks blurry. So to have it, to have this not be an issue, to have the pixel size not be an issue, it's like a vector image for anyone who knows, like graphic design stuff. It can just get blown up and blown up and it keeps recalculating. I think that's really cool. But they could, like they're getting these live streams of Delphi or friends in their living rooms blown up as big as they want, and they're being filmed, essentially, all the time, which is really interesting.

And what this made me think about, and maybe it's just because I reread this story fresh off the finale of Love Island [USA] season seven, but I couldn't help but compare the hyper visibility of Delphi and her friends with the Islanders on Love Island and how like they're pretty much filmed 24/7.Obviously there are times when we don't see the Islanders, and there's times where in “The Girl Who Was Plugged In,” the people that are watching Delphi and her friends, there's times that they don't see her, like when she's asleep, right. There's specific times and there's even a scene in the story where they are essentially following a script that's showing, or that's going to show them, like buying a product and thinking that it's amazing. And so they're not seeing the reruns of that or the amount of takes that it takes to film that.

And we don't see everything on Love Island either. But nonetheless, there's still so much that we do see and there's still so much that the regular common people in this futuristic story see of Delphi and her friends. And I just thought it was really interesting how that like hyper visibility compared.

And it got me thinking about influencers, because that's obviously what Delphi and Paul and all the celebrities are. They're influencers. They're like our modern day influencers. They're supposed to be online all the time. That's what it feels like. And they are advertising, without advertising, these products, they're being paid to say, this product is amazing. “Oh, I love this haircare product.” And that's essentially what Delphi is. And so it's crazy to me how in 1974, James Tiptree Jr. predicted that. And not that it wasn't happening before. Obviously there were celebrities that were, you know. Showing off like certain clothes and people would see them in magazines and whatnot and then would go and buy those things.

But it's just, it's to a whole different extent now in the social media age where we can just be on our phones 24/7 and can have this parasocial relationship with influencers. That's kind of like the relationship that's happening between. The people in this story and all the celebrities. They're just obsessed with these celebrities, obsessed with them.

And so then it got me even thinking more about Love Island. And I was like, well, okay, so the hyper visibility's the same, but they're not advertising things. And then I was like, wait a minute. Actually, they kind of are not necessarily on purpose, but if you think about it. You're watching Love Island, you're watching any TV show, any reality TV show where there's real people and you see them wear something and you're like, wow, I really, really love that. I wanna go buy that. That's advertising. That's where the influence comes in from. 

I don't think that they're necessarily going into the villa with the idea that they're selling these clothes that they're wearing or selling some idea or some product. They might be, I can't say, but that's basically what seems to happen.

And a key example that I have noticed, in relation to this, is that sometimes I'll go on my Instagram explore page and I'll see posts from accounts that are literally all about what the islanders are wearing. Like that's it. It's like, oh, this is what Hannah wore and here's where you can buy it.

The people running the accounts will put screenshots of the islanders next to screenshots of the clothes from the online website or wherever they're getting them from, and give all the details. They'll tell you the store, the price, the color, and there's comments, hundreds of comments being like, oh, I want this, or, oh my gosh, thank God, thank you, I'm gonna buy this. That's crazy. They're basically advertising these clothes without going through. Traditional advertising roots, and that's exactly what Delphi was created for. So if you ask me, I think that's a little spooky, how much the story aligns with our reality and aligns with Love Island nonetheless. That is crazy to me. 

One of the other things that I really wanted to talk about after reading this story is hubris. It's not the most major part of the story. Um, but I was really interested in Paul's hubris and like when I was reading it, I wrote a little note in the side and I said his machismo, which I think is funny, an interesting term to use. I love that. But it's basically masculine pride. That's what machismo is. It's this desire that some men have to just save the day essentially, which is what Paul tried to do. Once he realizes what Delphi is, that she is what they call a remote, where her brain is, I wanna say they said it was like 40,000 miles away.

Remember they’re in Chile, her brain's in Pennsylvania. So far away. So she's a Remote. Paul realizes this and he gets it into his head that he has to save her, that his one true love is being infected. He is basically like this virus, she's a host for a viral brain, which is not true having read the story and knowing how Delphi comes to be. It's really more so that Delphi is leaching off of P. Burke instead. 

But Paul gets it in his mind that he wants to save Delphi, and so he uses his familial connections. I think we learned that like his parents or his father is one of the corporation owners. He's some big name and he ends up getting this pilot to take him on a boat, I think, or on another plane or something. But anyway, so they end up back in Pennsylvania. That part of the story was a little murky to me, but somehow they get from Chile to Pennsylvania. He gets into the underground facility where P. Burke is, the closet, as they called her space. And he breaks into the closet. He bursts past all these people and like is met with P. Burke. And P. Burke, if we can visualize, this is like in my mind, she's like a partially decayed body, but she's connected via like webs to the rest of the room. And it's like this techno, biotech figure. And her, it says her mouth is webbed over, and she can't really speak. And she's like, “no.” And “Paul,” and she can only say a couple words. But Paul doesn't realize. Because like I said, he doesn't understand how Delphi came to be. He doesn't realize that the person he's actually in love with, and this is where that question of is the essence of the self, the mind, or the body.

I think, like I said, I think it's the mind. So in my idea, Paul is in love with the mind of P Burke that's existing in Delphi's body. He doesn't realize this biotech figure in the closet is who he has fallen in love with. He does not realize that that is who he sees as or what he sees as Delphi. And in his own hubris to want to save his true love, he ends up killing his true love. He breaks the webs on P Burke. Essentially, Delphi dies and all people, all the scientists and staff that work there are like, “don't you realize what you just did?” He's holding up Delphi with his arm, so he doesn't realize that she has no control over her body. He lets go and she totters, and eventually he realizes what he's done and she's dead. The Delphi body is dead two hours later. 

That part of the story was so fascinating to me, and it's really interesting. It became even more interesting after I learned more about the author. So James Tiptree Jr. She was married for a couple years, but it says that her husband was a drunk and didn't treat her well, and so that ended up ending in a divorce, and I believe she got married one more time

Later on in life, she, and when she was younger too, she always said that she liked some men, but she was interested in women. And then later in her life she said she was lesbian. And so it's really interesting reading the story from the lens of somebody who was in a bad relationship and preferred women over men romantically because it really calls out this like male hubris in wanting to save the day and wanting to be the the prince, saving the princess, and how that's not always what needs to happen. Sometimes people get in their own way and can end up ruining what they were trying to save, and so I find that intensely fascinating.

I loved reading this story. Like I said, I read it for the first time when I was in college and I don't remember paying that much attention to it, if I'm going to be completely honest. But I'm so glad that I reread it. I am in awe, and I've already decided to share it with a couple friends who are going to read it too.

So that's really exciting for me. I've had a great time recording this episode of the podcast. Yay, episode number one. Stay tuned for later episodes next week. 

So in my trailer episode, I said that at the end of every, every episode, oh my gosh, I just said episode like a million times. But at the end of every episode, I'll share what the story is for the next episode so that you guys as listeners can read along and it'll make this kind of an interactive podcast. That's something I've always loved is when listeners and the podcast hosts can kind of get involved. So listeners can comment and say things, and I really wanna create this community space where we have like our little Plugged In community, and we're talking about these amazing pieces of science fiction written by women.

So to that note, our next episode will be about Annie Bot by Sierra Greer. This book came out in 2024, so it's 50. Did I do that math right? Yeah. 50 years after the girl who was plugged in. So we're taking a huge, huge time jump, but we're not taking that big of a jump in topic and in themes and ideas. I'm very excited to do Annie Bot. I'm very excited for the episode because my roommate, Maggie, will be joining as our guest. It is sure to be a great episode. Thank you all for listening. I am so excited that we are embarking on this journey together, and I'm excited to continue to read my way through women-centered science fiction. Subscribe on Spotify and follow along on Instagram at pluggedin.podcast. To access the transcript of this episode and all episodes, check out pluggedinpod.com.