Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"My feeling is that the chance of our surviving into the twenty-first century as working civilization is less than fifty percent but greater than zero."
- Isaac Asimov
 |
| Message Tree | ||
| A tree growing out of a huge cliff of crystal provides communication for a world. |
The message tree is a remarkable and creative idea, particularly in the context of the novel. The planet Lithia has virtually no naturally occurring metals on the surface and electrical power is extremely difficult to generate; how can you recreate electronic communications equipment? The answer lies in the piezoelectric effect.
| If the night were to turn out to be especially windy, there would doubtless be many voices coming and going to the Message Tree. It loomed ahead of him now, a Sequoialike giant... As the winds came and went... the tree nodded and swayed. With every movement, the tree's root system ... tugged and distorted the buried crystalline cliff upon which the city had been founded. At every such pressure, the buried cliff responded with a vast heart-pulse of radio waves - a pulse detectable not only all over Lithia, but far out into space as well. |
| From A Case of Conscience,
by James Blish. Published by Del Rey in 1958 Additional resources -
|
This sort of message device also lent itself well to the story; the world of Lithia was one in which the biosphere was seen as important by the indigenous sapient life.
The piezoelectric effect was discovered by one of more of the Curies around 1880; it is the voltage produced between surfaces of a solid nonconducting substance (dielectric) when mechanical stress is applied.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from A Case of Conscience
More Ideas
and Technology by James Blish
Tech news articles related to A Case of Conscience
Tech news articles related to works by James Blish
Message Tree-related
news articles:
- Tweeting Tree Like Blish's Message Tree
| I Want My 1928 Telestereo Hologram Now |
| Realistic Translation With The Waverly Labs Ambassador |
| Soli Gesture Tech Will Be In Google Pixel 4 |
| Lost Language Meanings Found By Machine Learning |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
'Our beams feed these worlds energy drawn from... the Sun'
'Reading science fiction and fantasy can help readers make sense of the world.'
'Instantly there appeared standing upon the disk, the image of a man...'
'Your order said for him to be able to be able to work out twists on the gags in the file...'
'So we took pictures of Guzub making a Three Planets, and I could construct this one to do it exactly right down to the thousandth of a second.'
'On the screen they passed in an endless, boundaryless flood of green specks...'
'It drew its power from six square yards of sunpower screens on its low curved roof.'
'He adjusted the n, the r and b knobs, and hopefully anticipated a turn for the better...'
'... stewing warm on their cushion of peritoneum and gorged with blood-surrogate and hormones, the foetuses grew and grew...'
