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"We follow the scientists around and look over their shoulders."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Herculoy | ||
| A very strong alloy like steel. |
Magnus Ridolph is setting a trap.
| A heavy concrete pill-box now rose on the
border of the blighted acreage, a windowless
building reinforced with steel and set on a
heavy foundation. A hundred yards from
the pill-box a ten-foot cylindrical block stood
anchored deep into the ground. An endless
herculoy cable ran from the pill-box, around
a steel-collared groove in the block, back
into the pill-box, where it passed around the
drum of an electric winch, then out again
to the block.
Magnus Ridolph glanced around the little room with satisfaction. There had been no time for attention to detail, but the winch ran smoothly, pulled the cable easily out, around the anchor block, back again. Inside the door rose a stack of resilian plates, each an inch thick, each trailing three feet of herculoy chain. |
| Technovelgy from The Howling Bounders,
by Jack Vance. Published by Startling Stories in 1949 Additional resources -
|
Compare to ultron from Armageddon: 2419 A.D. (1928) by Philip Frances Nowlan, permalloy from Fugitives From Earth (1939) by Nelson S. Bond, magnalloy from The Cave of Horror (1930) by S.P. Meek, helio-beryllium from Out Around Rigel (1931) by Robert H. Wilson, steelonium from Ralph 124c 41 + (1911) by Hugo Gernsback and plasteel from Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Howling Bounders
More Ideas
and Technology by Jack Vance
Tech news articles related to The Howling Bounders
Tech news articles related to works by Jack Vance
Herculoy-related
news articles:
- Osmiridium Sounds Like Science Fiction (But It's Not!)
| Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick |
| GNoME AI From DeepMind Invents Millions Of New Materials |
| Omniphobic Liquid-like Surfaces And de Camp's Telelubricator (1940) |
| MXenes - Atomic-Thin Metal Sheets Now Easier To Make |
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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 ...'
