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"I think we're still on that topic, still trying to figure out what computers are, how they change us, why we use them."
- Neal Stephenson
 |
| Life Wand | ||
| Shoots a powerful ray of energy. |
| I could see nothing but the Martian. I did not see the human standing behind him, nor did I notice the life wand the Martian cradled in his pseudolimb.
Then the Martian flowed inside, the man with him stepped in behind him, and the door relaxed. The Martian squeaked, "Good afternoon, gentlemen. Going somewhere?” I was frozen, dazed, by acute xenophobia. Dak was handicapped by disarranged clothing. But little Jock Dubois acted with a simple heroism that made him my beloved brother even as he died — he flung himself at that life wand. Right at it — he made no attempt to evade it. He must have been dead, a hole burned through his belly you could poke a fist through, before he hit the floor. But he hung on and the pseudolimb stretched like taffy — then snapped, broken off a few inches from the monster’s neck, and poor Jock still had the life wand cradled in his dead arms.
 (Lifewand from 'Double Star' by Robert Heinlein) |
| Technovelgy from Double Star,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Doubleday in 1956 Additional resources -
|
In this vignette, Smyth (as Bonforte) is being adopted into a Martian family:
l got through without stumbling. The Martian language is terribly difficult for the human throat at best and it was made no easier by the presence at my elbow throughout the ceremonies of a dozen adult Martians, each clutching a life-wand in his psuedolimbs... and I knew only too well that it took only a tiny pressure on a lifewand to give me eternal quietus.
Apparently I made no important mistakes; l lived through it. At last I was allowed to leave — a Martian citizen now myself, with thousands of Martian brothers and cousins, a Martian name of my own, and a Martian life-wand in my band, badge of my adult Martian status. Penny was waiting for me outside the gates of the nest.
The details of my adoption into a Martian family are as secret as the ritual of a lodge initiation...
(Lifewand from 'Double Star' by Robert Heinlein)
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'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
'Henry... assumed the curious absent look of a robot talking on the TBR circuits.'
'The king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions...'
'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
