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"Science fiction represents the modern heresy and the cutting edge of speculative imagination as it grapples with Mysterious Time---linear or non-linear time."
- Frank Herbert
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| Senso-Cells | ||
| Sensors that recorded personal characteristics of the owners of a house, to better serve their needs. |
The remarkable psychotropic houses of Vermillion Sands were able to reflect the most minute psychological quirks of their owners. They did this with plastex, a flexible plaster; but they needed input. For this, the senso-cell was used.
| Leisurely I retraced my way through the lounge and bedrooms, scanning the empty floors, running my hands over the smooth plastex walls, bracing myself to feel again the impact of Gloria Tremayne's personality. Blissfully, her presence would be everywhere in the house, a thousand echoes of her distilled into every matrix and senso-cell, each moment than anyone, apart from her dead husband, could ever know. |
| Technovelgy from The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista,
by J.G. Ballard. Published by Amazing Fact and Science Fiction in 1962 Additional resources -
|
You need some sort of compromise between a totally reactive house and the "non-responsive houses of the past:"
The first PT [psychotropic] houses had so many senso-cells distributed over them, echoing every shift of mood and position of the occupants, that living in one was like inhabiting someone else's brain.
The most commonly used sensors in homes are probably the thermostat (to keep the house at the temperature you want) and motion sensors. Motion sensors are being used for more than burglar alarms; they can also be used to turn lights or music on and off.
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'The pitiless M rays pierced Earth and steel and densest concrete as if they were so much transparent glass...'
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'
'Nanny is different,' Tom Fields murmured... 'she's not like a machine. She's like a person.'
'We made a crude , small cell and were delighted - and, I admit, somewhat surprised - to find it worked.'
'...we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'The clothes and jewelery drew their tiny power requirements from her movements.'
'At the end of each appendage's eight fingers there are tinier appendages...'
'We want to do something to help those who are suffering from tooth loss or absence,' said lead researcher Katsu Takahashi.
