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"When you're making a revolution in cyberspace, things look rather different from the way the 1980s cyberpunks wrote it."
- Charles Stross
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| Evolution Machine | ||
| A device that accelerates the process of evolution by millions of times. |
Dr. John Pollard has not only discovered the cause of evolution on earth, but is prepared to make possible evolution many times faster than man ordinarily experiences.
| A big cube-like structure of transparent metal surmounted by a huge metal cylinder resembling a monster vacuum tube, took up the room's center, and he showed us in an adjoining stone-floored room the dynamos and motors of his private power plant...
 ('The Man Who Evolved' by Schachner and Zagat) "...it is the cosmic rays, beating upon every living organism on earth, that cause the profound changes in the structure of those organisms which we call mutations... "I have been able in the last months to do something no physicist has been able to do, to concentrate the cosmic rays and yet remove from them their harmful properties. You saw the cylinder over the metal cube in my laboratory? That cylinder literally gathers in from an immense distance the cosmic rays that strike this part of earth, and reflects them down inside the cube. "Now suppose those concentrated cosmic rays, millions of times stronger than the ordinary cosmic rays that strike one spot on earth, fell upon a man standing inside the cube? What will be the result? ...He will be changed millions of times faster than ordinarily, will go forward in hours or minutes through the evolutionary mutations that all mankind will go forward through in eons to come!" |
| Technovelgy from The Man Who Evolved,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Wonder Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
Here's what happens when Dr. John Pollard steps into his device:
The cylinder broke again into glowing white light, and as the shafts of glowing white force shot down from the disk in the cube's ceiling upon Pollard, we glimpsed his whole body writhing as though beneath a terrifically concentrated electrical force. The shaft of glowing emanations almost hid him from our view.
Thanks to Winchell Chung (aka, @nyrath) for reminding me to put this item in the index.
He stepped up into the cube, standing directly beneath the disk in its ceiling...
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Tech news articles related to The Man Who Evolved
Tech news articles related to works by Edmond Hamilton
Evolution Machine-related
news articles:
- Evolution Machine Compresses Eons Into Days
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| When Colds Threaten You Can't Do This - Or Can You? |
| MAI-Voice-2 Microsoft Text-To-Speech |
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'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'
'Our planes are going to start bringing in bales of discarded plastics...'
'... completely forgetting the ship at sight of the awesome figure and great head of the giant Gaut...'
'So, Ender, we will now begin your education.'
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
