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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
 |
| Full-Shift Set Variable | ||
| Infinite possibilities built into a game machine. |
You've seen pinball machines, but not like this one.
| "What's the object of the game?" Tinbane asked.
"We have here," the technician explained, "what we call a full-shift set variable. In other words, the terrain through which the steel ball moves is never the same. The number of possible combinations is -" he leafed through his report but was unable to find the exact figure - "anyhow, quite great. In the millions. It's excessively intricate, in our opinion..." |
| Technovelgy from Return Match,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Galaxy in 1967 Additional resources -
|
For earlier speculations on infinitely variable gaming environments, see the remarkable kingdom in a box, from Stanislaw Lem's 1965 story The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age.
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'...the rocket’s landing-arms automatically unfolded.'
'...points and patches of light... sliding all over their faces in a programmed manner that had been designed to foil facial recognition systems.'
'...the combined Wind-Suncatcher, like a spray of tulips mounted fanwise.'
'I went to the control room where the three other men were manipulating their mechanical men.'
'The low-slung monorail car, straddling its single track, bored through the shadows on a slowly rising course.'
'It was a smooth ovoid floating a few inches from the floor...'
'... he thrust in his charging arm to replenish his store of energy.'
'...the terrible Jovian gravity that made each movement an effort.'
