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"People ask me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research. I just enjoy reading the stuff, and some of it sticks in my mind and fits into the stories."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Magnetically Floating Furniture | ||
| Furniture that is suspended at the proper height using magnetic forces. |
Short legs, long legs - people differ. How can you make sure that furniture is at the right height?
| The office was spookily furnished, since none of the furniture had legs. Everything was suspended magnetically at the proper height. The tables and the desk and the bar and the couches were floating slabs. The chairs were tilted, floating bowls. And most eerie of all, pencils and pads were scattered at random through the air, ready to be snatched by anyone who had an idea worth writing down. |
| Technovelgy from The Sirens of Titan,
by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.. Published by Dell in 1959 Additional resources -
|
In the novel, one of the characters opines that this kind of furniture should "see like hotcakes." Not so.
Thanks to Mike Billa for submitting this item.
"Sitting on an American Levitation couch is harder than standing up in a birchbark canoe," said Fern dryly.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Sirens of Titan
More Ideas
and Technology by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tech news articles related to The Sirens of Titan
Tech news articles related to works by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Magnetically Floating Furniture-related
news articles:
- Levitating Bed Vonnegut's Future Now
- Hoverit Lounger Suspended Vonnegut Dream
- Hovering Levi-Table
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| AI-Powered Jesus Hologram Accepts Confessions |
| Miss Alabama Beauty Contest Offers Different Standards |
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Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
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2000's 2010's
'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.'
