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"What television does is rent us friends and relatives who are quite satisfactory. This is quite something, to rent artificial friends and relatives right inside the house."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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| Visiphone | ||
| Visual as well as audio communication. |
As far as I know, this is the first use of this clever neologism, certainly as far as conventional science fiction in concerned.
| Beyond a doubt, he was greatly worried for, after muttering to himself a while, he turned to a visiphone which recorded
the image of the party at the other end.
"Section QG32, division KM2937," he called into the instrument. In a moment the face oŁ the official in charge of the indicated division appeared in a small disk mounted on top of the phone. "Mentel Prolack AD8C," said the Superintendent Inspector, "you will have a fast inspection flier ready for use at once with a crew of three. Include a Wexton ray machine." |
| Technovelgy from The Message From Space,
by David M. Speaker. Published by Amazing Stories in 1930 Additional resources -
|
This was a popular term; here it is used by 'Doc' Smith in Triplanetary (1934):
A slightly different spelling of this word was used earlier in a variety magazine, The Black Cat, in 1915; see the entry for Visaphone zoom call in a Harry Stephen Keeling short story John Jones's Dollar.
Then, as she sat upon a bench, recovering her strength, he flipped on the lifeboat's visiphone projector and shot its invisible beam up into the control room, where he saw space-armored figures furiously busy at the panels.
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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.'
'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
