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"I suspect that religion is a necessary evil in the childhood of our particular species. And that's one of the interesting things about contact with other intelligences: we could see what role, if any, religion plays in their development."
- Arthur C. Clarke
 |
| Ferretscope | ||
| A counter-surveillance tool to detect the presence of listening devices. |
| The woman took my arm and urged me down the corridor. I glanced back and saw Zeb silhouetted in in the portal, covering our rear. My guide paused and pushed me into an almost pitchblack alcove, then she took from the folds of her robes a small object which I took to be a pocket ferretscope, from the small dial that glowed faintly on its side. She ran it up and down and around, snapped it off and returned it to her person.
"Now you can talk," she said softly. "It's safe." I felt a gentle touch at my sleeve. "Judith?" I whispered. "Yes," she answered, so softly I could hardly hear her. |
| Technovelgy from If This Goes On...,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1940 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the eavesdropper from James Blish's 1957 novel Cities in Flight.
Thanks to Connor Lawrence for submitting this item.
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'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
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'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
'Henry... assumed the curious absent look of a robot talking on the TBR circuits.'
'The king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions...'
'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
