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"Science fiction represents the modern heresy and the cutting edge of speculative imagination as it grapples with Mysterious Time---linear or non-linear time."
- Frank Herbert
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| Tele-Photophonic Attachment | ||
| A device that permits a telephone funnel to see as well as hear. |
Before the advent of the television camera, you needed to call it something.
| “Praise your Boss!” hooted the funnels. “He is the people’s friend. That’s how he deals with kings! He shows no mercy to the people’s enemies. The Tsar is a low-grade moron. His heredity is horrible. He cannot pass Test 1 upon the Binet board. He is a wretched brach, and will now work in the leathers till he dies, producing for you.”
“Hurrah!” screamed the spectators. “Out with him! To the Rest Cure!” And the absurdity of the display came home to none except myself. These citizens were in deadly earnest. How shrewd the mind that had contrived a pabulum so well calculated to appeal to the mob 113palate! The contrived crudeness, the planned abuse betrayed an intimate and assured acquaintance with the people’s psychology. “Praise louder!” whispered the intimate voice beside me. “Why do you not praise when the others do?” And then I realized that the funnel was speaking to me! Nobody else had heard, nobody else was meant to hear. I knew that the funnels had a tele-photophonic attachment whereby one could see as well as hear. Somewhere, then, the person who had spoken to me that morning was watching and playing with me. |
| Technovelgy from The Messiah of the Cylinder,
by Victor Rousseau. Published by AC McClurg & Co. in 1917 Additional resources -
|
If you remember the Two Minutes Hate from 1984, this is pretty much the same, a generation earlier.
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'The pitiless M rays pierced Earth and steel and densest concrete as if they were so much transparent glass...'
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'
'Nanny is different,' Tom Fields murmured... 'she's not like a machine. She's like a person.'
'We made a crude , small cell and were delighted - and, I admit, somewhat surprised - to find it worked.'
'...we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'The clothes and jewelery drew their tiny power requirements from her movements.'
'At the end of each appendage's eight fingers there are tinier appendages...'
'We want to do something to help those who are suffering from tooth loss or absence,' said lead researcher Katsu Takahashi.
