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"…we store information differently, reading a science fiction story, to make it make sense."
- Samuel R. Delany
 |
| Fossil Shell Coin | ||
| The use of rare natural shells of an extinct species, for money. |
| ...their money currency does not consist of the precious metals, which are too common among them for that purpose. The smaller coins in ordinary use are manufactured from a peculiar fossil shell, the comparatively scarce remnant of some early deluge, or other convulsion of nature, by which a species has become extinct. It is minute, and flat as an oyster, and takes a jewel-like polish. Their...bills of exchange [are] thin metallic plates which answer the purpose of our bank notes. |
| Technovelgy from The Coming Race,
by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Published by William Blackwood and Sons in 1871 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the truffle skin money of Philip K. Dick.
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'Michel Ardan, as a Frenchman, was declared chief cook, an important function, which raised no rival.'
'Sapiro’s computer just kept dialing at random, hanging up on humans, until it got a fellow computer of the same type as itself.'
'I request that you feed the correlation between those dots and the levers of the panel into my memory banks.'
'... all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'If you surf over a bump, the spokes contract to roll over it.'
