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"...there's a great affinity between writing poetry and SF."
- Dan Simmons
 |
| Resilian | ||
| A natural fiber that is as strong as steel. |
Nature often provides strong structures or fibers in a organic setting. Fertile ground for the imagination of science fiction writers.
| Blantham reached in his pocket,
produced a small white box. Magnus Ridolph, snapping back the top, found within a
cluster of inch-long purple tubes, twisting and
curling away from a central node. They were
glossy, flexible, and interspersed with long
pink fibers. He shook his head politely.
“I’m afraid I can’t identify the object.” “It’s ticholama,” said Blantham. "Resilian in its natural state.” “Indeed!” and Magnus Ridolph examined the purple cluster with new interest. “Each of those tubes,” said Blantham, “is built of countless spirals of resilian molecules, each running the entire length of the tube. That’s the property, naturally, which gives resilian its tremendous elasticity and tensile strength.” |
| Technovelgy from The Howling Bounders,
by Jack Vance. Published by Startling Stories in 1949 Additional resources -
|
As is Vance's wont, he provides additional details:
H e leaned back in his chair, tapped
his pencil thoughtfully against his
notebook. He returned to the mnemiphot,
dialed ahead to the preparation of resilian
from the raw ticholama. The purple tubes,
he found, were frozen in liquid air, passed
through a macerator, which pulverized the
binding gums, soaked in hesso-hexylic acid,
then alcohol, dried in a centrifuge, a process
which left the fibres in a felt-like mat. This
mat was combed until the fibers lay parallel,
impregnated with hesso-penthol and compressed into a homogeneous substance — resilian.
Compare to krimskell fiber from Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert.
He stepped into the TCI office, where he
was received with courtesy. He requested and
was permitted use of the mnemiphot. Seating
himself comfortably, he found the code for
resilian, ticked it into the selector, attentively
pursued the facts, pictures, formulae, statistics drifting across the screen. He noted the
tensile strength — about the same as mild
steel, and saw with interest that resilian
dampened with hesso-penthol welded instantly into another piece of resilian.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Howling Bounders
More Ideas
and Technology by Jack Vance
Tech news articles related to The Howling Bounders
Tech news articles related to works by Jack Vance
| 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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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
