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"At its best, SF is the medium in which our miserable certainty that tomorrow will be different from today in ways we can't predict, can be transmuted to a sense of excitement and anticipation, occasionally evolving into awe."
- John Brunner
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| Welton Cube | ||
| High-density storage device. |
| "I can use it to write the sort of commentary you want, and take time to miniaturize and stabilize a message. The problems of a time-tripping historiogapher are odd and awkward. One Welton fine-grain memory cube would record all I could say over the next ten years--except that I would have no use for one even if I had it; the technology to use it is lacking.
"By to way--Ishtar, did you plant a recorder in my belly? You are a darling, dear, but sometimes a devious darling--and there is something there. ... But I suspect that it is a Welton cube with an ear hooked to it and a ten-year power supply; it is about the right size." |
| Technovelgy from Time Enough For Love,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Putnam in 1973 Additional resources -
|
They were also used for making backup copies:
Thanks to an anonymous reader for the quote and tip for this item.
"But when I started worrying I started trying to do something to protect the records. I instituted a policy of making dead-storage duplicates of all processed data at the point they enter the Archives. I had in mind copying the entire Archives, then shipping them somewhere. But I had no funding, or enough money of my own, to pay for the memory cubes. They should be Welton Fine-Grains, or they would be too bulky to ship.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Time Enough For Love
More Ideas
and Technology by Robert Heinlein
Tech news articles related to Time Enough For Love
Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein
Welton Cube-related
news articles:
- Hybrid Memory Cube Is Speedy And Compact
- Sandisk 1 Terabyte SD Memory Card Surfaces
| 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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'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.'
