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"A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content."
- Theodore Sturgeon
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| Dolphin's Hands | ||
| Digital prosthetic for dolphins. |
Once you've found out that dolphins are intelligent enough to perform useful tasks for humanity, what can you pay them with?
| “Oh. Well, if I said it with a small h you’d think I meant humans, wouldn’t you? Potential paranoids, albino crashlanders, boosterspice allergics, people with missing limbs and resistance to transplants — handicapped like that.” “Yah.” “Whereas what I deal with is sentient beings who evolved with minds but with nothing that would serve as hands.” “O-oh. Like dolphins?” “Right. Are there dolphins on Down?” “Hell, yes. What else would run our fishing industry?” “You know those things you pay them off in? They look like a squirt-jet motorboat motor with two padded metal hands attached.” “The Dolphin’s Hands. Sure. We sell ’em other stuff, tools and sonic things to move fish around, but Dolphin’s Hands are what they mainly need.” “I make them...”
“Well, don’t you see that there must be Handicapped species all over the galaxy? Minds but no hands. I tell you, Jilson, it gives me the shivers. For as long as we expand to other stars we’re going to meet more and more handless, toolless, helpless civilizations. Sometimes we won’t even recognize them. What are we going to do about them?” |
| Technovelgy from Handicap,
by Larry Niven. Published by Galaxy Science Fiction in 1967 Additional resources -
|
This is a precursor to the idea of Jones, the cyborg dolphin from William Gibson's 1981 short story Johnny Mnemonic.
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'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'
'He wore spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.'
'... with the Master-operator all you have to do is push one! A remarkable achievement!'
'Not like me. A T-1000, advanced prototype. A mimetic poly-alloy. Liquid metal.'
'It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
'The massive feet working the pedals, arms and hands flashing and glinting...'
