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"Science fiction operates a little bit like science itself, in principle. You've got thousands of people exploring ideas, putting forth their own hypotheses. Most of them are dead wrong; a few stand the test of time; everything looks kind of quaint in hind"
- Peter Watts
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| Genoprinter | ||
| A device that does a 'live capture' of a biometric skin sample. |
| The gravity trains departed from the level just below Center. Lilo bought two tickets, nervously sticking her hand into the slot of the genoprinter before doing so. It had worked well enough on Mars.
... She felt the scrape of the sampler across her palm, the machine whirred, and somewhere in the banks of the Pluto Central Computer an entry was made: JOVIAN-342 (ID-L-502-KC-98) BOARDED FLORIDA-BARROW SHUTTLE 0349 HRS. 4/8/71. The security check was automatic, and it came up green. |
| From The Ophiuchi Hotline,
by John Varley. Published by Quantum Science Fiction in 1977 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the automated DNA typing from the 1997 film Gattaca and the palm lock from Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Ophiuchi Hotline
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Tech news articles related to works by John Varley
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