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"[Science fiction is ] That branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance upon human beings."
- Isaac Asimov
 |
| Crystal Corn | ||
| Tiny data storage crystals. |
Forrester woke up in the future, after dying in a fire. His body was burned beyond recognition, but he had been frozen until medical science advanced enough to heal the damage.
Have any improvements been made? He goes to a "book store."
| I spent the afternoon in a bookstore. There were no books in it. None had been printed for nearly half a century...
The bookstore resembled, instead, an electronic laboratory. The books were crystals with recorded contents. They can be read the aid of an opton, which was similar to a book but had only one page between the covers. At a touch, successive pages of the text appeared on it... Thus all my purchases fitted into one pocket, though there must have been almost three hundred titles. My handful of crystal corn - my books. |
| Technovelgy from Return from the Stars,
by Stanislaw Lem. Published by Not known in 1961 Additional resources -
|
For another take on tiny data storage media, see the dime disk.
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resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Return from the Stars
More Ideas
and Technology by Stanislaw Lem
Tech news articles related to Return from the Stars
Tech news articles related to works by Stanislaw Lem
Crystal Corn-related
news articles:
- Crystals In Gel For Computer Memory
- Thanks For Being Open Apple, Amazon, Barnes And Noble
- Penguin E-Books For Libraries
- Hitachi Quartz Glass Memory Lasts Forever
- Data Crystals Offer Eternal Storage
| Lonestar Offers Lunar Storage For Ultimate In Security |
| 100X Improvement In DNA Information Storage |
| Twist Bioscience High Density Digital Data On DNA |
| Store One Bit On One Atom |
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Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
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'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
'Oscar picked up a trowel. 'I'm the tool for the mortar,' the little trowel squeaked cheerfully.'
'... he waited for the robotrix attendant to finish fueling up his ship.'
The Roujin Z system provides care to fully bedridden patients - and then some!
'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
