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"The wealth of the universe is all over your head. We need to take command of the solar system to gain that wealth..."
- Larry Niven
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| Electrical Rain Machine | ||
| A device that can procure rain from passing clouds. |
Probably the first clear reference to this idea in science fiction.
| "It is a fine evening," said Davis, bowing low, "and if your honour pleases, I think we had better get the patent steam-mowing apparatus in motion to-morrow. If the sun should be as hot to-morrow as it has been to-day, I am sure the hay will make without using the burning glass at all."
"Do as you like, Davis," returned his master, taking his pipe, "you know I leave these matters entirely to you." "And does not your honour think I had better give the barley a little rain? It will be all burnt up, if this weather continues; and if your honour approves, it may be done immediately, for I saw a nice black heavy-looking cloud sailing by just now, and I can get the electrical machine out in five minutes to draw it down, if your honour thinks fit." "I have already told you I leave these things entirely to you, Davis," returned the baronet, puffing out volumes of smoke from his hookah. "Inundate the fields if you will; you have my full permission to do whatever you please with them, so that you don't trouble me any more about the matter." "But I would not wish to act without your honour's full conviction," resumed the persevering steward. "Your honour must be aware of the aridity of the soil, and of the impossibility that exists of a proper development of the incipient heads, unless they be supplied with an adequate quantity of moisture." |
| Technovelgy from The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century,
by Jane Webb Loudon. Published by Henry Colburn in 1828 Additional resources -
|
Compare to global climate control from A Journey In Other Worlds (1894) by John Jacob Astor IV, straightening the earth's poles from The Purchase of the North Pole (Topsy Turvy) (1889) by Jules Verne, weather control from Le Vingtième Siècle: La Vie Électrique (1892) by Albert Robida, the weather machine from Slaves of Mercury (1932) by Nat Schachner and the weather integrator from Robert Heinlein's 1941 novel Methuselah's Children.
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'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'
'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'
