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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Thought Pattern Divination | ||
| Attempting to construct the thoughts of a person by imitating their actions. |
The Iszic were fanatical in their determination to protect their intellectual property - the seeds of their amazing house trees and other products.
| One phase of the surveillance puzzled Farr. He approached the lieutenant and indicated an operative a few yards away. “Why does he mimic me? I sit down, he sits down. I drink, he drinks. I scratch my nose, he scratches his nose.”
“A special technique,” explained the Szecr. “We divine the pattern of your thinking.” “It won’t work,” said Farr. The lieutenant bowed. “Farr Sainh may be quite correct.” Farr smiled indulgently. “Do you seriously think you can predict my plans?” “We can only do our best.” “This afternoon I plan to rent a sea-going boat. Were you aware of that?” The lieutenant produced a paper. “I have the charter ready for you. It is the Lhaiz, and I have arranged a crew...” |
| Technovelgy from The Houses of Iszm,
by Jack Vance. Published by Better Publications in 1954 Additional resources -
|
A similar method was detailed in Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye; an individual alien assigned to learn everything about an individual person. See Fyunch(click)
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'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
'Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows.'
'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
