I worked for him for a while putting some of his papers in order to go to the Stanford library archives. His letters with Nash and Minksy were pretty interesting.

Just got lost in there for a very nice hour. Much more practical and to my taste than Kurzweil. Then I found this, a Kurzweil/McCarthy disagreement: http://www.edge.org/discourse/singularity.html

Edit: really enjoyed the story, thanks Colin.