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"What we're doing pop culturally is like burning the rain forest. The biodiversity of pop culture is really, really in danger."
- William Gibson
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| Psychophone | ||
| A device that allows the user to tune their mind to a future reality - a time-traveling device. |
In the story, the author argues that while the body is stuck in the present, the mind is able to move more freely. But you need a very specific gadget to do it.
| It looked just like one of those old-fashioned crystal sets, except that the crystal was very big, very shiny and was set in a horizontal vacuum tube. There was the same single dial, the same cat's whisker. Attached to the lot by a length of flex was what might have been a pair of headphones, except in place of the phones were a pair of polished, smoothly rounded copper circles shaped to fit outside the ears and close against the skull. |
| Technovelgy from The Mechanical Mice,
by Maurice G. Hugi. Published by Astounding Stories in 1941 Additional resources -
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Here's how it works:
This is a very early use of the "alternative futures" idea in science fiction.
When you imagine what the future will be like, you make a characteristic choice of all the logical possibilities, you pick your favorite from a multitude of likely futures. The psychophone somehow tunes you into a future reality. It makes you depict within your mind the future as it will be shaped in actuality, eliminating all of the alternatives that will not occur.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Mechanical Mice
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Tech news articles related to The Mechanical Mice
Tech news articles related to works by Maurice G. Hugi
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'The robant and the tiny old woman entered the control room slowly...'
'Guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs... What are the odds?'
'It is as you thought when you constructed the time crystal, my master Vaylan.'
'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
'Gaines and Harvey mounted tumblebugs, and kept abreast of the Cadet Captain...'
