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"Science Fiction is speculative fiction in which the author takes as his first postulate the real world as we know it, including all established facts and natural laws."
- Robert Heinlein
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| Argento-Platinoid Dispatch Box | ||
| Impenetrable message carriers. |
| "Here's the dispatch box, sir. But it's sealed."
"Sealed! Well I'll be darned." Penger looked disconsolately at the square box of argento-platinoid that Britt held out to him. "That's a tough note. Suppose we lose that somehow—only Bell knew where that deposit is; and he's gone." Even captains of interplanetary trading ships are sometimes venal, and Mitco was ever willing to pay well for a glimpse of the reports and other dispatches that shuttle across the skies between the Earth Company's far flung stations and the great Central Headquarters at Denver. Hence these dispatch boxes were devised. Once sealed, they could not be opened save by the intricate unsealing apparatus that existed only at Denver and, by virtue of the supreme power of the B. P. C., at such control points of the august body as the Mineral Claims Office on Ganymede Any attempt to get at the contents by force, released a chemical within that utterly destroyed everything enclosed. |
| From Venus Mines, Incorporated,
by Nat Schachner (w. AL Zagat). Published by Wonder Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the personal capsule from Foundation (1951) by Isaac Asimov, the single sheet molecule from Dorsal! (1960) by Gordon R. Dickson, truffle skins from The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) by Philip K. Dick and the message cylinder and distrans from Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert.
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'LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE.'
'...a rolled-up sheet of a thin, dark metal strange to them.'
'... his contract with Space Industries required him to work summers in their orbital factory complex.'
'Space-weather men had been placed at their disposal...'
With each successive print, our model needed to incorporate more structural ingredients to minimize print failures.
'... Wendis stared thoughtfully at the brilliant lines on the spectroscope screen.'
'A special spot-wavex scrambler also caused his televised image, in the area immediately about his lips, to mouth the vowels and consonants beautifully.'
'... it was as if the upper part had been removed, like a cut deck of cards.'
Sumomo will get those office workers into good shape!
