Mad fantasy-fic idea: what if even death is no escape from the law, and contracts signed in life remain binding after shuffling off this mortal coil?

[nonya_bidniss@infosec.exchange]

@cstross While this idea is quite different, for some reason it reminded me of the Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. Series by Kevin J. Anderson, which I enjoyed quite a lot & wished there was more of.

[flippac@types.pl]

@cstross You're pretty close to the world of The Craft Cycle and Craft Wars books, ofc

[martinvermeer@fediscience.org]

@xChaos @moira @cstross In Dutch even the same word: schuld.

[mattkenworthy@mastodon.social]

@electropict This is very close to Vernor Vinge's novella "The Cookie Monster" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cookie_Monster_(novella)

[dsurkin@mastodon.social]

@cstross Iain M. Banks had a novel ("Surface Detail") about a planet that enforced post-life hell by digitalizing a person's memories and personality and then installing it in a computer-generated sim of hell.

[kruku@mastodon.bida.im]

@angusm @cstross
Should we ever be able to map individual human consciousness, including memories, completely and accurately from human brains the notion of a "debtor's Hell" could become a reality, at least as far as using human minds as computers for unpaid labour is concerned.

[oddhack@mstdn.social]

@cstross only a small step from holding your descendants responsible for your debt, which has been and sometimes still is a thing in the Former US, at least.

[geeksam@ruby.social]

@xinit @cstross Also something from what's his name that did Buffy and Angel. At least one character in the show (and one in the comic) had contracts with Wolfram & Hart that continued post mortem.

[xinit@mastodon.coffee]

@dsurkin Are we all in that now? Or maybe just me?

@cstross

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@dsurkin Yes, I have a signed first edition copy. (It also has a thinly-disguised Elon Musk style entrepreneur who buys up all the bankrupt hells and runs hells as a software service on behalf of their creators.)

[max@smeap.com]

@a_cubed @cstross More than a little. The underlying magic system of the series keeps pointing out new ways that *all* of its magic is “just” contract law, even the powers of deities and volcanoes and the weather and…

It’s a wild premise that keeps leading to wilder books

[mjj@mstdn.dk]

@Astronomy_A2Z @cstross That is basically what happens to me at work wheneverI have had a heavy lunch.
A resurrection effort around 1 PM.

[juergen_hubert@mementomori.social]

@cstross

This actually pops up in German folklore, and fits with the old Catholic notion that donations made in the name of the dead, or paid masses held in their name, would shorten their time in purgatory.

The Fire Mountain

Sunken Castles, Evil Poodles Wiki (wiki.sunkencastles.com)