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" I sometimes suspect that we're seeing something in the Internet as significant as the birth of cities. It's really something new, it's a new kind of civilization."
- William Gibson
 |
| Engineered Plague | ||
| A virus that primarily attacks one sex. |
| The plagues. Were there any women anywhere who weren't infected?
Hovey thought not; they had all caught it, every woman; he didn't want to
think of it. He sighed and rubbed one hand over his eyes. But that had been
the enemy's masterstroke, surely, as good as anything Hovey's own people
had ever delivered. To scatter an infection that fastened only on the female
half of humanity, an infection that drove them, young or old. modest or
wanton, irresistibly toward the male, urged by the inward fire of the disease. . . . Nothing else could so have poisoned human life, could so have
maimed the human race. In women the plague smouldered quietly. It betrayed itself only in their pitted skins, their roughened voices, their cracked lips. But the men who received the virus from them, transmuted by its incubation in their bodies, died quite quickly and, Hovey thought, quite unpleasantly. There was a gangrenous rotting and a smell. No doubt of it, that plague had been the enemy's masterpiece. |
| Technovelgy from The Hole in the Moon,
by Margaret St. Clair. Published by Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1952 Additional resources -
|
Compare to designed bacteria from Seeds of the Dusk (1937) by Raymond Z. Gallun and the specific gene weapon from The Mannichon Solution (1967) by Irwin Shaw.
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Tech news articles related to works by Margaret St. Clair
| Living Human Neuron Biological Compute Rack |
| Biological War: A Scenario |
| What'll You Have? Extinct Animals Returned, Or Synthetic Eggshells? |
| Black Fungus Blocks Radiation |
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'Space-sickness is one of the most unpleasant sensations that a human being can experience. Not all are subject to it...'
'...I saw a nice black heavy-looking cloud sailing by just now, and I can get the electrical machine out in five minutes to draw it down.'
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'The answer to the dumb student's prayer.'
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'It was a relief to enter one of the comfortable autos, whisper a direction down the tube, and just know that you would be taken to your destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest manner.'
'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
