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"The SF approach: an awareness that things could have been different, that this is one of many possible worlds, that if you came to this world from some other planet, this would be a science fiction world."
- Neal Stephenson
 |
| Radio-Facsimile Receiver | ||
| A device that prints a newspaper in your home. |
Not really a prediction, Wilcox shows us a future that is now gone, thanks to highly readable displays that are so thin and light you can carry them throughout the house.
| Alone in his apartment, the feverish
young King of Speed paced, waited for
his radio-facsimile receiver to bring the
evening news. He was on a spot. By
this time the nation's press services
doubtless knew of his stinging defeat.
The radio buzzed. Layer by layer, the headlines printed off. |
| Technovelgy from Ben Gleed, King of Speed,
by Don Wilcox. Published by Amazing Stories in 1939 Additional resources -
|
By the year of this story, W9XZY of St. Louis delivers the First Daily Newspaper by Radio Facsimile. More than 1,000 U.S. households are experimentally equipped with fax receivers that electronically print morning newspapers overnight.
Compare this device to the personalized news from Hugo Gernsback's 1911 novel Ralph 124c 41 + and the homeopape from his 1969 novel Ubik (it is also called the homeostatic newspaper in his 1963 story If There Were No Benny Cemoli).
Don't forget the oldest reference I know about, the home news printer from The Senator's Daughter (1879) by Edward Page Mitchell.
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'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'
'And the lifter was being piloted by a large pizza with extra cheese...'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'
'Our planes are going to start bringing in bales of discarded plastics...'
'... completely forgetting the ship at sight of the awesome figure and great head of the giant Gaut...'
