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"Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen."
- Larry Niven
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| Brain Rejuvenation | ||
| Erase unnecessary parts of memory to make room for new impressions. |
| "...our life span has been so tremendously increased that 85,000 cycles is not an uncommon age among us. That is because there are no parts to wear out. But what does happen is this: You know that the brain is only capable of absorbing a certain amount of knowledge and ideas. In the case of such a race as your own where the lifetimes are so short, this fact is of no account, as you probably only use a small fraction of your total mental capacity. But with us it is different. After a very long time the brain becomes saturated and loses the power of recording any new impression. When this occurs the individual is no longer conscious of the present but of the past only. Originally, as such a one was of no use to the community, they used to be painlessly exterminated. But in the light of advanced science it became possible to make certain operations on them which destroyed all the less important impressions and thus partially rejuvenated the brain. Each Extrosian can survive about forty of these treatments which are undergone once every two thousand cycles. After the brain has taken more than forty treatments, it grows stale and becomes worn out. Then it is extinguished. I myself am comparatively young, for I have as yet only taken eight treatments." |
| Technovelgy from The Message From Space,
by David M. Speaker. Published by Amazing Stories in 1930 Additional resources -
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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.
