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"Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it."
- Robert Heinlein
 |
| Infinite Improbability Drive | ||
| Generates a field in which anything, no mater how improbable, can exist. |
This mind-bendingly clever idea should force you to your knees, right this moment, where you will genuflect and hope that your awe finds its way to Douglas Adams, who unfortunately is no longer with us. I'm just going to give you a taste of it.
| "Please do not be alarmed," it said, "by anything you see or hear around you…We are now cruising at a level of two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand to one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway. Thank you…" Ford was wildly excited. "Arthur!" he said, "this is fantastic! We've been picked up by a ship powered by the Infinite Improbability Drive!" |
| Technovelgy from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
by Douglas Adams. Published by Harmony Books in 1979 Additional resources -
|
There is a lot more material on this piece of technovelgy; however, you should certainly go to the source to read it - on the odd chance that you haven't actually read this book.
However improbable, there is a precursor to this idea; see the Probability Time Wave Tube from Elimination, a 1936 short story by John W. Campbell, Jr.
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'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
'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.'
