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"It's hard to tell stories about critters that are not human. John W. Campbell tried it, in "Twilight," and everybody says it's a wonderful story, and nobody ever reads it twice."
- Jerry Pournelle
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| Precog | ||
| A person with precognitive ability (can predict the future). |
If you want to put criminals away before they commit crimes, you need to know the future. For that, you need precogs. Dickian precogs see just a short way into the future - "a week or two ahead at the very most."
| Doors opened and closed, and they were in the analytical wing. Ahead of them rose impressive banks of equipment - the data-receptors, and the computing mechanisms that studied and restructured the incoming material. And beyond the machinery sat the three precogs, almost lost to view in the maze of wiring...
All day long the idiots babbled, imprisoned in their special high-backed chairs, held in one rigid position by metal bands, and bundles of wiring, clamps... The three gibbering, fumbling creatures, with their enlarged heads and wasted bodies, were contemplating the future. "Deformed... and retarded," Anderton instantly agreed. "...the talent absorbs everything; the esp-lobe shrivels the balance of the frontal area." |
| Technovelgy from The Minority Report,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Fantastic Universe in 1956 Additional resources -
|
H. Beam Piper used the word "precog" as a verb (maybe the first); Philip K. Dick used it as a noun to describe a precognitive person. See the other entry for precog (v).
Minority Report fans may be surprised that Dick used this word in his 1954 story A World of Talent:
Compare to the time machine from The Time Machine (1895) by HG Wells, the Dutch clock from The Clock That Went Backward (1881) by Edward Page Mitchell, the Anachronopete from El Anachronopete (1887) by Enrique Gaspar, the time travel back pack from Tryst in Time (1936), the chronoscope from Legion of Time (1938) by Jack Williamson, and the time-telespectroscope from The Exile of Time (1931) by Ray Cummings.
“I can see some drawbacks to being a Precog. But knowing that you’re going to have a spat, can’t you alter things before it begins?”
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Minority Report
More Ideas
and Technology by Philip K. Dick
Tech news articles related to The Minority Report
Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
Precog-related
news articles:
- Look Forward: IRS 'Pre-Audit' Would Predict Tax Cheating
- IJOP Integrated Joint Operations Platform China's Minority Report?
- PredPol Crime-Prediction A Hit In L.A.
- Police Use Predictive Maps ala 'Minority Report' Routinely
- UK Police AI To Stop Criminals Before They Strike
| Biological War: A Scenario |
| What'll You Have? Extinct Animals Returned, Or Synthetic Eggshells? |
| Black Fungus Blocks Radiation |
| Lunar Biorepository Proposed For Cryo-Preservation Of Earth Species |
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'Our planes are going to start bringing in bales of discarded plastics...'
'... completely forgetting the ship at sight of the awesome figure and great head of the giant Gaut...'
'So, Ender, we will now begin your education.'
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
