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"Science fiction is really sociological studies of the future, things that the writer believes are going to happen by putting two and two together."
- Ray Bradbury
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| Hand Computer | ||
| A small pocket-sized computing device. |
As far as I know, this is the first use of this phrase in science-fiction.
| Foster stared at his hand computer with distaste. It worked well enough but every operation had to be manually controlled and the answers were obtained in code. Now if he could use the school computer — Well, why dream, he felt conspicuous enough, as it was, carrying a hand computer under his arm every evening as he left his office. |
| Technovelgy from The Dead Past,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1956 Additional resources -
|
Niven and Pournelle used this phrase in Mote in God’s Eye:
There was a link. When the crew and scientists convened abort HMS Lenin to discuss the HMS McCarthur they logged in to their pocket computers and linked to the ship's main computer. When the xenobiologists convened on New Scotland to discuss the Motie representitives they tested the link between their hand computers and the main computer. When the Brownie took the pocket computer apart and then reassembled it, Sally tested it by linking to the ship's computer.
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Science Fiction
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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...'
