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"Everything starts as somebody's daydream. And, when you're daydreaming, it is science fiction. It's when you start work out how you put it together, true science fiction becomes real science."
- Larry Niven
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| Hydropathic bed | ||
| A heated bed that used something more comfortable than water. |
Something less sloshy than water would be a useful innovation - even though waterbeds can be outfitted with compartments or big sponges to cut down on the waves.
| He lay quietly in the hydropathic bed while his heart shuddered and his eyes focused at random on objects in the room, simulating a calm he could not feel. The walls of green jade, the nightlight in the porcelain mandarin whose head nodded interminably if you touched him, the multi-click that radiated the time of three planets and six satellites, the bed itself, a crystal pool flowing with carbonated glycerin at ninety-nine point nine Fahrenheit. |
| Technovelgy from The Demolished Man,
by Alfred Bester. Published by Vintage Books in 1952 Additional resources -
|
The only downside is that, if some of the current concerns over the availability of potable water cease to pass, you may want to have a bed you can drink from - just in case.
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Science Fiction
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'...the rocket’s landing-arms automatically unfolded.'
'...points and patches of light... sliding all over their faces in a programmed manner that had been designed to foil facial recognition systems.'
'...the combined Wind-Suncatcher, like a spray of tulips mounted fanwise.'
'I went to the control room where the three other men were manipulating their mechanical men.'
'The low-slung monorail car, straddling its single track, bored through the shadows on a slowly rising course.'
'It was a smooth ovoid floating a few inches from the floor...'
'... he thrust in his charging arm to replenish his store of energy.'
'...the terrible Jovian gravity that made each movement an effort.'
