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"As the rate of technological development speeds up, the gap between science fiction and what we’re living now is getting narrower all the time."
- Richard Morgan
 |
| Synthite Food | ||
| Compact food for space travelers. |
| The food was simple enough, artificially flavored solids, artificially compacted; jelly-like proteins held in a meshwork of woven threads of digestible carbohydrates. Their artificiality was blatant, but they filled lean stomachs, and supplied vital energy in almost totally digestible form. |
| Technovelgy from Planet of Eternal Night,
by John W. Campbell. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1939 Additional resources -
|
I also liked the preferred drink for spacemen, which may remind some fans of NASA in the 1960's of Tang:
Compare to the compact food pastilles from The Senator's Daughter (1879) by Edward Page Mitchell and concentro from Armageddon: 2149 AD (1928) by Philip Frances Nowlan.
For drinking they had a slightly stimulating, clear-colored liquid, flavored with citric acid, synthetic orange oil and sweetened with glucose.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Planet of Eternal Night
More Ideas
and Technology by John W. Campbell
Tech news articles related to Planet of Eternal Night
Tech news articles related to works by John W. Campbell
| Holland Factory 3D Printing 500 Tons Of Steak Per Month |
| Robochef Robotic Food Prep |
| Drone Deliveries Instead Of Waiters In Restaurants? |
| SliceIt! Why Not Teach Robots To Use Knives? |
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
