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"As the rate of technological development speeds up, the gap between science fiction and what we’re living now is getting narrower all the time."
- Richard Morgan
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| Doughpot | ||
| A mass of white, dough-like protoplasm, ranging in size from a single cell to perhaps twenty tons of mushy filth. |
I don't ordinarily add creatures to the index, but this is an early description of this kind of alien creature.
| It was after the second rain that he met the doughpot, as the creature is called in British and American Venus. In the French strip, it’s the pot à colie, the "paste pot"; in the Dutch — well, the Dutch are not prudish, and they call the horror just what they think it warrants. Actually, the doughpot is a nauseous creature. It’s a mass of white, dough-like protoplasm, ranging in size from a single cell to perhaps twenty tons of mushy filth. It has no fixed form; in fact, it’s merely a mass of de Proust cells — in effect, a disembodied, crawling, hungry cancer. It has no organization and no intelligence, nor even any instinct save hunger. It moves in whatever direction food touches its surfaces; when it touches two edible substances, it quietly divides, with the larger portion invariably attacking the greater supply. It’s invulnerable to bullets; nothing less than the terrific blast of a flame-pistol will kill it, and then only if the blast destroys every individual cell. It travels over the ground absorbing everything, leaving bare black soil where the ubiquitous molds spring up at once — a noisome, nightmarish creature. |
| Technovelgy from Parasite Planet,
by Stanley G. Weinbaum. Published by Astounding Stories in 1935 Additional resources -
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'There was a wall ahead... It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
'...support the interior human structure against Jupiter’s pull.'
'Anything larger than a BB shot it picked up and placed in a tray...'
'The German chemists have discovered how to supply the needed elements in compact, undiluted form...'
'Compounds devised by the biochemists for the rapid building of bone...'
'The car faltered as the external command came to brake...'
'It is about the size and shape of a kitchen stool, gyro-stabilized...'
