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"I suspect that religion is a necessary evil in the childhood of our particular species. And that's one of the interesting things about contact with other intelligences: we could see what role, if any, religion plays in their development."
- Arthur C. Clarke
 |
| Voder | ||
| Device that produces speech by purely mechanical means. |
| Bormon, in the narrow confines of his armor, disconnected the mechanical voder used by its deposed owner, for all Martians are voiceless. |
| Technovelgy from Exit From Asteroid 60,
by D.L. James. Published by Planet Stories in 1940 Additional resources -
|
Robert Heinlein uses the word in a slightly different sense in his 1942 story Waldo:
Turning back to Stevens he added, “But if Baldur amuses you, you must see Ariel."
“Ariel?"
Instead of replying, Waldo touched the keyboard of the voder, producing a musical whistling pattern of three notes. There was a rustling near the wall of the room “above” them; a tiny yellow shape shot toward them — a canary. It sailed through the air with wings folded, bullet fashion. A foot or so away from Waldo it spread its wings, cupping the air, beat them a few times with tail down and spread, and came to a dead stop, hovering in the air with folded wings.
There were control panels of several sorts, some of which seemed obvious enough in their purposes — one for lighting which was quite complicated, with little ruby telltales for each circuit, one which was the keyboard of a voder, a multiplex television control panel, a board which seemed to be power relays although its design was unusual...
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'... an artificial intelligence equal to the human.'
'Rayno folded up the microterm and tucked it back inside his jumper.'
'Nemourlon armor of reasonable weight resists penetration by most fragments and any bullet that is not both reasonably heavy and fairly high-velocity.'
'Several thousand of them formed the positioning grid on the rubble pile.'
'Its slack walls tightened, bulged, were crossed by ripples and waves of movement.'
'Norman... had never ridden any motorized device that lacked onboard steering and balance systems.'
You will note that HG Wells also figured out the aspect ratio of the future!
'As though a switch had been turned off, the pain stopped...'
'At the ringside opposite them a table had been removed to make room for a large transparent plastic capsule on wheels.'
