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"Everything starts as somebody's daydream. And, when you're daydreaming, it is science fiction. It's when you start work out how you put it together, true science fiction becomes real science."
- Larry Niven
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| Mite | ||
| A very small device (about the size of a dust mite) that has been manufactured for a particular purpose. |
I really enjoyed the way he wrote about nature and artifice in this passage. From the standpoint of the narrator, the creatures of the natural world and the tiny robots are on the same level.
| They found a lot of mites, of course, both natural and artificial. The natural ones looked like little crabs and had been quietly inhabiting the outer layers of other creatures bodies for hundreds of millions of years. The artificial ones had been developed in the past few decades. Most of them consisted of a spherical or ellipsoidal hull with various attachments. |
| Technovelgy from The Diamond Age,
by Neal Stephenson. Published by Bantam Books in 1995 Additional resources -
|
Mites are, of course, real creatures; they are tiny arachnids that consume bits of skin or other organic matter.
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Science Fiction
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'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'
'... with the Master-operator all you have to do is push one! A remarkable achievement!'
'Not like me. A T-1000, advanced prototype. A mimetic poly-alloy. Liquid metal.'
'It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
'The massive feet working the pedals, arms and hands flashing and glinting...'
'There were cubic miles of it, and it glistened like a silvery Christmas tree...'
'Jason had been guiding the caravan of cars as usual...'
"The robot solemnly hit a ball against the wall, picked it up and teed it, hit it again, over and again...'
