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"None of us, no matter what continent or island or ice cap, asked to be born in the first place, and that even somebody as old as I am, which is 80, only just got here."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
 |
| Spy Beam | ||
| A surveillance device that projects energy into a room, revealing conversation taking place. |
| He said "The commission will, of course, have a spy beam on our conversation. This is against the law, but they will use one nonetheless..."
"However," and Avakim seated himself deliberately, "the recorder I have on the table - which is a perfectly ordinary recorder to all appearances and performs its duties well - has the additional property of completely blanketing the spy beam. This is something they will not discover at once." |
| Technovelgy from Foundation,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Doubleday in 1951 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the object-finder beam from L.F. Stone's 1931 story The Conquest of Gola and the spy-ray goggles from 'Doc Smith's 1934 novel Triplanetary.
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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.'
