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"As opposed to illiteracy, where you can't read, aliteracy means that you can but you just can't be bothered. They say aliteracy is on the rise these days."
- Peter Watts
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| Disruptor Bomb | ||
| A bomb with a very special purpose; when detonated in space, it makes it impossible to detect the center of the explosion from the dispersion of the fragments. |
In the novel, the protagonist wishes to divorce himself from humanity for a time. Not an easy thing to do when space travel is commonplace, and technology makes it easy for people to live wherever they like.
| ...he had carried out one final evasive maneuver ... a disruptor bomb, preprogrammed, had blasted the ship to molecules and sent the fragments traveling on a billion conflicting orbits through the universe...The bomb was designed to provide fifty false vectors per square meter of explosion surface, a virtual guarantee that no tracer could possibly be effective within a finite span of time. |
| Technovelgy from The Man in the Maze,
by Robert Silverberg. Published by Avon Books in 1969 Additional resources -
|
Those who believe that no one thinks about the fragments of explosive devices in this much detail are directed to the Ordnance Test and Evaluation Division of the U.S. Navy. Some typical user questions:
This device is intended to work on a large object, on a cosmic scale. To see a nanotechnological device that works in the microcosm, see the entry for ballisticule, from The Diamond Age
by Neal Stephenson.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Man in the Maze
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Tech news articles related to The Man in the Maze
Tech news articles related to works by Robert Silverberg
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'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
