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"I don't know why I write science fiction. The voices in my head told me to!"
- Charles Stross
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| Wrist Search Display | ||
| A wearable device that uses its own search beam to view scenes close by. |
| She lifted her left wrist and showed him, strapped thereto, what looked like an enameled wrist watch with a large bezel; only the dial of this was blank, and radiating from the sides were five gnarled stems. "Do you have these on Earth?" she asked. He admitted they did not. "Look," she said, turning her body at an angle and adjusting the stems. AS ALLISON looked, close by her side, the dial took on an opalescent glow, and dimly there appeared on it threads and shadows which under her adjustments cleared into a picture, animated—the heads and figures of half a dozen women. "Television," he said. "You’re receiving this from a broadcasting studio." "No," she corrected; "a search-beam, portable. I can focus it at a distance on whatever I choose. It passes through almost anything." ... The ethnologist sat on the edge of the cot and held up his wrist. What a marvel of ingenuity the little device was! Tentatively he turned the stem she had first touched. The dial glowed, then meaningless shadows appeared on it. The slightest movement of his body changed these shadows for new ones. He turned other stems and got what seemed to be a wall. Delicately he manipulated in the attempt to probe beyond. |
| Technovelgy from A Matter of Size,
by Harry Bates. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1934 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the Wireless Wrist Intercom from The Shape of Things To Come (1936) by H.G. Wells, Reserve Bracelet from Plague (1944) by Murray Leinster, Tattletale from The Game Players of Titan (1963) by Philip K. Dick, Wristband Viewer from Changeling (1980) by Roger Zelazny, Implant-Watch from Cloak of Anarchy (1972) by Larry Niven, Predator Wrist Display from Predator (1987) by John McTierna, Wrist Command from Tides of Light (1989) by Gregory Benford, Tracking Bracelet from Shadowspeer (1990) by Patricia Jo Clayton, Inertial Bracelet from Psychohistorical Crisis (2001) by Donald Kingsbury, Command Bracelet from Sagramanda (2006) by Alan Dean Foster and the Wristpad from New York 2140 (2017) by Kim Stanley Robinson.
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'What would you do,' Eric asked the robot cabdriver, 'if your wife had turned to stone, your best friend were a toad, and you had lost your job?'
'those suits they wear -- call them 'stillsuits' -- that reclaim the body's own water...'
'Now, except for weight and heat, the same conditions prevail in this chamber as in space.'
'there were so many worms and counterworms loose in the data-net...'
'Now, look, let's start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics...'
'..the synthetic intellects at the Place of Knowledge had far outstripped the minds of men.'
'But after washing and drying clothes had to be smooth - free from fine lines and wrinkles ...'
