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Science Fiction
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"SF looks towards an imaginary future, while fantasy, by and large, looks towards an imaginary past."
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Here's a description of the device in use:
A THIN ROD of intense light shot out. The haze in its path glowed like tarnished silver. Flitting insects reflected the glare like bits of incandescent magnesium, before their smoking bodies dropped to the ground. The beam seared into the green foliage.
It also had the property of being able to slowly emit the light that it absorbed - including pictures!
...Marwell almost chuckled. “Remember when we first found the thing?” he asked. “I was fussing with the lever. I didn’t press it much — just enough to release the tiniest bit of stored-up rays. But you can see what happened.”
“And now for an explanation of the pictures themselves. When the disk absorbs the sun’s rays, it, of course, absorbs an impression of the sun’s image, as well as impressions of the images of the various surrounding objects that are capable of reflecting light...
Then, when the plate is acted upon by the exciter, it gives up its images. If you can imagine a mirror whose reflective action can be delayed indefinitely, you have a crude analogy of what takes place. Only, since the last images to be absorbed, are given up first, and the first last, the sequence is, of course, in reverse.
Compare to the slow glass rod from The Exhalted, a 1940 short story by L. Sprague de Camp and the scenedows from Bob Shaw's 1968 story Light of Other Days. Probably the earliest references to the idea occurred in The Mirror That Remembered" (1932) by Christopher Blayre.
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Science Fiction
Timeline
Biohybrid Robots Made Of Living And Synthetic Materials
'If the biological robots were not living creatures, they were certainly very good imitations.'
Poul Anderson's 'Brain Wave'
"Everybody and his dog, it seemed, wanted to live out in the country; transportation and communication were no longer isolating factors."
AI Note-Taking From Google Meet
'... the new typewriter that could be talked to, and which transposed the spoken sound into typed words.'
Qore IcePlates Are Personal Cooling Suits
'... underneath they consisted of networks of cooling tubes against the skin.'
Waymo Cars Shout At Each Other, Autonomously
'My cars talk to one another. I have no doubt about it...'
Seeing Faces On Grains Of Sand (AI Pareidolia)
'... the imprint of her image on the telephoto cell.'
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