[Ads-l] Antedating "virus" of the computer type

[Stanton McCandlish]

"Computer virus" as a eponym?  Nice find!

PS: If anyone's planning to read these, Gerrold re-released *When HARLIE
Was One* in a "2.0" edition, updated to better reflect where AI research
was heading. The overall plot is the same, but the writing is a bit tighter
as well as the science better (though that will have aged a bit by now,
anyway; 2.0 came out in 1988).

--
Stanton McCandlish
McCandlish Consulting
5400 Foothill Blvd Suite B
Oakland CA 94601-5516

+1 415 234 3992

https://www.linkedin.com/in/SMcCandlish


On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 5:06 PM Bill Mullins <amcombill at hotmail.com> wrote:

> OED has 1972, for the David Gerrold novel mentioned below.
>
> Gregory Benford published a story in 1970 that had a computer virus in it,
> but it was never called that.  The program's name, however, was "VIRUS".
>
> Seems like this should at least be a bracketed citation.
>
> Gregory Benford, "The Scarred Man" _Venture_ 5/1970 p 128-129
>
> "The flunkies would go in, fiddle with the machine the way Sapiro had told
> them, and then Sapiro would pop in, dump the program -- he called it
> VIRUS -- and take off."
>
> [...]
>
> > "The term ... "virus" first appeared in a computer context in David
> Gerrold's "When
> > Harley Was One" (Ballantine, 1972)."
>

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