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"I realized there was a heavy-duty change coming in biology, and I could write a really compelling novel about catastrophic evolution, punctuated equilibrium."
- Greg Bear
 |
| Megadont | ||
| An engineered mastodon, used to convert vegetable matter into energy. |
How else will you wind up your kink-springs?
| Lalji and Shriram had been standing in the winding room of Ganesha Kinetic, watching a misplaced ton of SuperFlavor burn into joules. Shriram’s paired megodonts labored against the winding spindles, ponderous and steady as they turned just-consumed calories into kinetic energy and wound the shop’s main storage springs.
Priti and Bidi. The massive creatures barely resembled the elephants that had once provided their template DNA. Generippers had honed them to a perfect balance of musculature and hunger for a single purpose: to inhale calories and do terrible labors without complaint. The smell of them was overwhelming. |
| Technovelgy from The Calorie Man,
by Paolo Bacigalupi. Published by F&SF in 2005 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the power-wagons from Jack Vance's 1967 novel The Last Castle for an interesting inversion of this idea.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Calorie Man
More Ideas
and Technology by Paolo Bacigalupi
Tech news articles related to The Calorie Man
Tech news articles related to works by Paolo Bacigalupi
| Black Fungus Blocks Radiation |
| Lunar Biorepository Proposed For Cryo-Preservation Of Earth Species |
| Let's Make Slaver Sunflowers! Engineering Plants To Reflect Light |
| Machete-Wielding Philodendron Isn't Going To Take It Anymore |
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'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
'Briquet’s head seemed to think that to find and attach a new body to her head was as easy as to fit and sew a new dress.'
'...copy was turned out in a charming and entirely feminine handwriting.'
'It was almost unheard of for slunch to spread that fast...'
'He then started hand movements of definite pattern...'
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain...'
