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"It's hard to tell stories about critters that are not human. John W. Campbell tried it, in "Twilight," and everybody says it's a wonderful story, and nobody ever reads it twice."
- Jerry Pournelle
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| Talking Nail | ||
| Used by scanners when not talking. |
Needed for communication.
| He saw by her look of stricken assent that he had won the argument. He did not use his voice again. Instead, he pulled his tablet up from where it hung against his chest. He wrote' on it, using the pointed fingernail of his right forefinger — the Talking Nail of a Scanner — in quick cleancut script: “Pis, drlng, whrs Crnching Wire?”
She pulled the long gold-sheathed wire out of the pocket of her apron. She let its field sphere fall to the carpeted floor. Swiftly, dutifully, with the deft obedience of a Scanner’s wife, she wound the Cranching Wire around his head, spirally around his neck and chest. |
| Technovelgy from Scanners Live in Vain,
by Cordwainer Smith. Published by Fantasy Publishing Co. Inc. in 1950 Additional resources -
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More Ideas
and Technology from Scanners Live in Vain
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and Technology by Cordwainer Smith
Tech news articles related to Scanners Live in Vain
Tech news articles related to works by Cordwainer Smith
Talking Nail-related
news articles:
- Polish Turns Your Nail Into A Stylus
| Polish Turns Your Nail Into A Stylus |
| Huawei Pura X Folding Phattie Phone |
| Positioned Cybertrucks With Free Starlinks WiFi In LA |
| Will Whales Be Our First Contact? |
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Science Fiction
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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.'
