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"it slowly dawned on me that the landscape of science is maybe what interests people a great deal in science fiction."
- Gregory Benford
 |
| Electelscope | ||
| Telescope uses electronics applied to optics. |
| In their electelscopes a far-flung shimmer had appeared across the blackness of space and they had leaped to send warning of the one unconquered menace that harried the spaceways. An ether eddy! |
| Technovelgy from The Cavern of the Shining Pool,
by Leo Zagat. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1937 Additional resources -
|
The images are shown on a view-plate:
He uses this idea again in 1943, with a bit more detail:
A star was missing, out of Draco.
"I see. Thuban's blotted out."
"Has been for the last five minutes."
"So there's a meteor moving along the straight line between us, either away from, or following us."
"Following us." Rade's voice was so tense it thrummed. "And not a meteor. Take a look through the electelscope."
Karsdale's remarkable application of electronics to optics that in the space of a tube no larger than a man's arm reduces the apparent distance of an object to one-tenth the actual, was already switched in, but the thing that obscured Thuban must have moved since Rade focused it. I twirled thumbscrews until I got it clear again.
For I had kept my eyes on the electelscope viewplate as we talked, and just then, the Phobos having completed a circuit of the red planet, the black peak came into its field. And I had caught a flicker of movement on its surface.
"What do you make of this, Toom?" He seemed not to have heard me, so absorbed he was in the sternward view-screen. I reached him. "Five degrees gamma of Terra." He told me where to look.
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Cavern of the Shining Pool
More Ideas
and Technology by Leo Zagat
Tech news articles related to The Cavern of the Shining Pool
Tech news articles related to works by Leo Zagat
| Is China Mining Helium-3 On The Moon's Farside? |
| Solitary Black Hole Wanders In Space |
| Spaceplane From Virgin Atlantic |
| Taikonauts Exercise In China's Tiangong Space Station |
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
