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"The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer. Day after month after year after story after book."
- Harlan Ellison
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| Interactive Map | ||
| A small book with a 'touch-screen' paper interactive map. |
This is a remarkable idea; it predates by decades similar ideas from cyberpunk novels of the late 1980's and early 1990's.
| ...it gave me a little plastic book with four fold-outs, maps of the city's transit system. When I wanted to go somewhere, I touched the silver-printed name - street, level, square - and instantly on the map a circuit of all the necessary connections lit up. I could also travel by gleeder. Or by rast. Or - finally - on foot; therefore, four maps. |
| From Return from the Stars,
by Stanislaw Lem. Published by Not known in 1961 Additional resources -
|
I'm just astonished at how modern this idea is. The map is clearly interactive; it is described as being some sort of very thin-film device - it's not a tablet PC.
Compare this item to Neal Stephenson's mediatron from his 1995 novel The Diamond Age.
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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'A worker replaced by a nubot... had to be compensated.'
'... forcing the energy transfer which allowed him to regrow his lost fingers.'
'The car surged and lifted, clearing its top by a negligible margin.'
Science fiction authors are serious about sleep, too.
'I had explained," said Nessus, "that our civilisation was dying in its own waste heat.'
'Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? - any work a human being does around a house.'
SF writers have thought about this since the 19th century.
