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"We're about 20 minutes away from the point where Clarke's law kicks in and technology becomes indistinguishable from magic."
- Peter Watts
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| Barytrine Field | ||
| Very large scale stasis field. |
In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Earth was demolished because it stood in the way of galactic progress. The superintelligent race in Troubled Star, however, was a bit nicer; they offered to tow the Earth to a new star.
| "...We put a barytrine field around Earth and tow the planet to some star similar to Sol. The barytrine field is a sort of time stasis - we don't know all about them yet but we're learning - which will make it seem as though there was a sudden cosmic wink...
"...You won't notice it. We've got maybe a half-dozen planets in the barytrine field right now... It stops all time - not dead-still but damned near... I assure you that if you drop a marble just before the barytrine field goes on , it will land after the field is off and you will have traversed a thousand years." |
| Technovelgy from Troubled Star,
by George O. Smith. Published by Better Publications in 1952 Additional resources -
|
Compare this item to the Slaver stasis field from Larry Niven's 1970 novel Ringworld and the nullentropy bin from Frank Herbert's 1984 novel Heretics of Dune.
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'He was in a high-ceilinged windowless cell with walls of glittering white porcelain.'
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'Guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs... What are the odds?'
'It is as you thought when you constructed the time crystal, my master Vaylan.'
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