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"In my mind I have gone all over the universe, which may make it less important for me to make piddling little trips... I did enjoy seeing Stonehenge. It looked exactly the way I thought it would look."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Pain Canopy | ||
| Pain by nerve induction improves interrogation. |
| Past cultures have used all manner of devices to induce pain - the rack, the wheel, the boot, the dental drill and a host of others. But the Hierarchy is merciful and is not pleased by mutilation. Therefore, it's priests have devised a means of producing all the same sensations of these varied tortures by direct stimulation of the nerves that transmit the sensation of pain. Thus the same results are achieved without any injury to the bodily organism, save it come from shock or convulsion. There is this further advantage - the torture need not be interrupted for fear that injury to the tissues will result in death...
A thick metallic canopy had been moved forward behind the chair. It fitted around the witch's head like a cowl. Curving flanges followed the lines of her body... "Let the pain enter the fingers of her left hand." |
| Technovelgy from Gather, Darkness!,
by Fritz Leiber. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1943 Additional resources -
|
See also the pain box from Frank Herbert's Dune (1965) as the pain ray from Edmond Hamilton's Crashing Suns (1928).
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and Technology from Gather, Darkness!
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Tech news articles related to works by Fritz Leiber
| Is There A Subterranean Ocean? |
| The Robotic Shopping Cart Of The Future |
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| Marie Curie's Papers Still Radioactive |
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'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'
'The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.'
'Hasan always pitched a Gauzy - a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough.'
'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
