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"There was a time when one old eccentric guy with a notebook could do something important to science. Now even the resources of a major university are often not enough."
- Jerry Pournelle
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| PyrE | ||
| A thermonuclear explosive that is detonated by thought alone. |
One of the major themes of this book is the primacy of the individual, as opposed to the society. Individual responsibility becomes more important when an explosive is created that can be detonated by thought.
| Like widening rings in a pond, the Will and the Idea spread, searching out, touching and tripping the delicate subatomic trigger of PyrE. The thought found particles, dust, smoke, vapor, motes, molecules. The Will and the Idea transformed them all. In Sicily… the residues and precipitates had been dumped down a drain which led to the sea. For many months the Mediterranean currents had drifted these residues across the sea bottom. In an instant a hump-backed mound of water towering fifty feet high traced the courses, northeast to Sardinia and southwest to Tripoli. |
| Technovelgy from The Stars My Destination,
by Alfred Bester. Published by Berkley in 1956 Additional resources -
|
Another class-leveling invention in this novel is the discovery of jaunting.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Stars My Destination
More Ideas
and Technology by Alfred Bester
Tech news articles related to The Stars My Destination
Tech news articles related to works by Alfred Bester
| Harvard Metamaterials Change Structure Instantly |
| Nano-Chainmail 2D Mechanically Interlocked Polymer |
| Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick |
| FlexRAM Liquid Metal RAM And One Particular SF Movie Robot |
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Science Fiction Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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Science Fiction
Timeline
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'Compounds devised by the biochemists for the rapid building of bone...'
'The car faltered as the external command came to brake...'
'It is about the size and shape of a kitchen stool, gyro-stabilized...'
'The greatest problem of all was the elimination of the human element of braking together with its inevitable time lag.'
'Across the ancient sea floor a dozen tall, blue-sailed Martian sand ships floated, like blue smoke.'
'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
