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"If we're going to be consistent and advocate freedom of speech we have to advocate freedom of encrypted speech too. The genie is out of the bottle, cryptologically."
- Neal Stephenson
 |
| Helio-Beryllium | ||
| Unusual alloy combines a metal and a gas. |
The amazing spaceship Comet is full of modern conveniences, but what of the ship itself?
| I had seen the Comet before, but never so close. With a hull of helio-beryllium - the new light, inactive alloy of a metal and a gas - the ship was a cylinder about twenty feet long by fifteen in diameter, while a pointed nose stretched five feet farther at each end. Fixed in each point was a telescopic lens, while there were windows along the sides and at the top - all made, Garth informed us, of another form of the alloy almost as strong as the opaque variety. |
| Technovelgy from Out Around Rigel,
by Robert H. Wilson. Published by Street and Smith in 1931 Additional resources -
|
Star Trek fans who think that Gene Roddenberry invented everything will be surprised to note that helio-beryllium is an alloy that has a transparent variant. Wilson wrote about it forty years before anyone thought about transparent aluminum.
Compare to herculoy from The Howling Bounders (1949) by Jack Vance,
ultron from Armageddon: 2419 A.D. (1928) by Philip Frances Nowlan,
permalloy from Fugitives From Earth (1939) by Nelson S. Bond,
magnalloy from The Cave of Horror (1930) by S.P. Meek,
steelonium from Ralph 124c 41 + (1911) by Hugo Gernsback and
plasteel from Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert.
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Tech news articles related to works by Robert H. Wilson
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| MXenes - Atomic-Thin Metal Sheets Now Easier To Make |
| Do We Still Need Orbiting Factories? |
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
