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"This category [science fiction] excludes rocket ships that make U-turns, serpent men of Neptune that lust after human maidens, and stories by authors who flunked their Boy Scout merit badge tests in descriptive astronomy."
- Robert Heinlein
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| Bore-Pellets | ||
| Anti-underground bomb shelter ordinance. |
When this short story was written, it was the height of the cold war. Plans for building bomb shelters were in every popular magazine.
But can you keep up with the Joneses, and still be safe? What if those pesky Soviets come up with something new.
| The next day the news-machines shrilled out the news. The first revelation of the new Soviet bore-pellets.
Bob Foster stood in the middle of the living room, the newstape in his hands, his thin face flushed with fury and despair. "Goddamn it, it's a plot!" His voice rose in baffled frenzy. "We just bought the thing and now look. Look!" He shoved the tape at his wife. "You see? I told you!" "I've seen it," Ruth said wildly. "I suppose you think the whole world was just waiting for you in mind. They're always improving weapons, Bob. Last week it was those grain-impregnation flakes. This week it's bore-pellets..." …They're going to put some kind of metal grill on the market, as soon as the government approves it. They spread it over the ground and it intercepts the bore-pellets. It screens them, makes them explode on the surface, so they can't burrow down to the shelter… The bore-pellets were specifically designed to penetrate the surface and seek out warmth… |
| Technovelgy from Foster, You're Dead,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Star Science Fiction Stories in 1955 Additional resources -
|
In the story, PKD combines cold war paranoia and capitalist sales hucksterism. Bob's despair doesn't end with the fact that his bomb shelter had been made obsolete. There was something new for him to buy! See the entry for grill-screen adaptor.
Also, sf fans with that underground bunker mentality may want to take a look at the robot earthworms from Harry Harrison's 1962 story War with the Robots.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Foster, You're Dead
More Ideas
and Technology by Philip K. Dick
Tech news articles related to Foster, You're Dead
Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
Bore-Pellets-related
news articles:
- Bunker Busters and Bore-Pellets
| Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade |
| Moscow Attacked By Hundreds Of Drones |
| China's Handheld Electromagnetic Gun |
| Is The Seattle Ultrasonics C-200 A Heinlein Vibroblade? |
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'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
