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"I do think there is a link in that in both cases, writing fiction or writing a computer program, at any given moment you're focusing on a very specific and particular thing—one word, one line of code, whatever."
- Neal Stephenson
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| Star Machine | ||
| A device that serves as a boost to psychokinetic powers of mind, enabling paranormals to send their awareness to distant planets. |
Shepherd Blaine is a space explorer, but he never leaves the earth. A member of a corporation called Fishhook, he sends his mind where nature has made it so difficult for human bodies to go.
| He crawled upward from the well of darkness into which he had been plunged, groping his way with a blind persistence that was almost driven instinct... Blaine opened his eyes and saw that the lid of the place in which he lay had been tilted back, and the glare of brightness that was a hooded light bulb was stabbing down at him. He took inventory of his body and it was all right. There was no reason for it not to be all right, for it had lain here and rested for all of 30 hours.
 (Star Machine from 'Time is the Simplest Thing' by Clifford Simak) He climbed from the coffin-like machine and shivered, for he was suddenly cold. "Here's your jacket, sir," one of the faces said, a face that surmounted a white smock. It was coming back, familiar now as he stood there are sipping at his glass of milk, the great operations room with its rows of glistening star machines, some of which were closed while the rest stood open. And in the closed ones lay others like himself, their bodies left behind and their minds far out in space. |
| Technovelgy from Time is the Simplest Thing,
by Clifford Simak. Published by Doubleday in 1961 Additional resources -
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- Symbiotic Sphere By Space Synapse
| Nifty Folding Electric Bicycles! |
| Boring Company Drills Asimov's Single Vehicle Tunnels |
| Boring Company Vegas Loop Like Asimov Said |
| SpaceX Rocket Shuttle Point-To-Point On Earth |
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'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
'It hurtled on down with inconceivable speed until it was visible as thousands of tiny robot planes...'
