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"The writing is clicking away in my head and piling up, and unless I get it on paper somehow it's going to create uncomfortable pressure in my skull."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Quadraturin | ||
| Substance that creates more space when applied to walls, floors and ceilings. |
In his fanciful story, Krzhizhanowsky provides a fanciful answer to the problem faced by Soviet citizens like Sutulin, who have been assigned strict housing limits: eighty-six square feet per apartment.
| So then: we have discovered - this is a secret now - an agent for biggerizing rooms. Well, won't you try it?" The stranger's hand popped out of the briefcase and proffered Sutulin a narrow dark tube, not unlike a tube of paint, with a tightly screwed cap and a leaden seal. Sutulin fidgeted bewilderedly with the slippery tube and, though it was nearly dark in the room, made out on the label the clearly printed word: Quadraturin... On closer inspection it turned out that this zinc packet was tightly fitted - as is often done by the makers of patented agents - with a thin transparent paper whose ends were expertly glued together. Sutulin removed the paper sheath from the Quadraturin, unfurled the rolled-up text, which showed through the paper's transparent gloss, and read:
DIRECTIONS
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| Technovelgy from Quadraturin,
by Sigizmund Krzhizhanowsky. Published by Not Known in 1925 Additional resources -
|
Sutilin carelessly spills the concentrated Quadraturin onto the floor of his room, which grows larger and larger.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Quadraturin
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and Technology by Sigizmund Krzhizhanowsky
Tech news articles related to Quadraturin
Tech news articles related to works by Sigizmund Krzhizhanowsky
Quadraturin-related
news articles:
- Brine Wells May Swallow Towns
| Harvard Metamaterials Change Structure Instantly |
| Nano-Chainmail 2D Mechanically Interlocked Polymer |
| Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick |
| GNoME AI From DeepMind Invents Millions Of New Materials |
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'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
'Oscar picked up a trowel. 'I'm the tool for the mortar,' the little trowel squeaked cheerfully.'
'... he waited for the robotrix attendant to finish fueling up his ship.'
The Roujin Z system provides care to fully bedridden patients - and then some!
'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
