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"This is a predictive tool I've used: There are goals we've sought for ten thousand years, and we'll go on seeking them. Instant transport and travel, immortality (or at least longevity and miracle cures.), instant learning …"
- Larry Niven
 |
| Extreme Black | ||
| A material so absolutely black that it absorbed all incident light. |
Here's the quote about the stuntship whose sole purpose was to fly into the sun to provide spectacular effects for a rock concert.
| "That," he said, "that... is really bad for the eyes."
It was a ship of classic, simple design, like a flattened salmon, twenty yards long, very clean, very sleek. There was just one remarkable thing about it. "It's so... black!" said Ford Prefect. "You can hardly make out its shape... light just seems to fall into it!" The blackness of it was so extreme that it was almost impossible to tell how close you were standing to it. "Your eyes just slide off it..." said Ford in wonder. |
| Technovelgy from Restaurant at the End of the Universe,
by Douglas Adams. Published by Not known in 1980 Additional resources -
|
The earliest reference to this idea (that I can find, anyway) is the absolute black from Jack London's 1903 short story The Shadow and the Flash.
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
