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"It was my preferred entertainment when I was a kid, so when I set out to be a writer, it was perfectly natural that I should write the sort of stories that I used to enjoy reading."
- John Brunner
 |
| Menslator | ||
| A translator that works by examining the mental image of what you are trying to say. |
Scyth Radnor is trying to explain to the beings on the third planet from the sun that it might be necessary to move their planet just a bit. Better get the menslator.
| ...Scyth Radnor, tinkering with his menslator on the darkside of Mercury, caught a whisper of a signal. He tuned his passband carefully, trying to peak it into one response strong enough to resolve into definitive thought, but the band was spread too wide, the thoughts were too diversified...
...he turned back to his menslator and turned up the gain. It radiated, for them, echoing the mishmash of thoughts directed back and forth across the face of Terra. |
| Technovelgy from Troubled Star,
by George O. Smith. Published by Better Publications in 1952 Additional resources -
|
Fortunately, it's not very big, so you can carry it around when you speak with the natives.
Compare this item to Larry Niven's translator disks from Ringworld (1970) and of course Douglas Adams' Babel fish from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Scyth laughed. He touched a little case hanging at his belt. "This gadget is what we call a menslator," he said. "It is always used in speaking to people on planets other than our own.
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'You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard...'
''OVERRIDE,' the City Fathers said suddenly, without being asked anything at all.'
'... they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to.'
'... the expressionless face before me was therefore that of the golem-wrestler, Rolem, a creature that could be set for five times the strength of a human being.'
'Waldo put his arms into the primary pair before him; all three pairs, including the secondary pair mounted before the machine, came to life.'
'... the glittering little rocket bolted to the black iron behind him.'
'The slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector...'
