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"in 1974 I experienced an invasion of my mind by a transcendentally rational mind, as if I had been insane all my life and suddenly I had become sane."
- Philip K. Dick
 |
| Nullentropy Bin | ||
| A compartment in which entropy was halted. |
In the novel, the ghola Duncan Idaho encounters objects from Dune's past. The nullentropy bin is a great plot device, keeping even food in a state of preservation.
| Duncan sat alone at the autoscrubbed table, a cup of brown liquid in front of him. Teg recognized the smell: one of the many melange-laced items from the nullentropy bins. The bins were a treasure house of exotic foods, clothing, weapons, and other artifacts - a museum whose value could not be calculated. There was a thin layer of dust all through the globe but no deterioration of the things stored here. |
| From Heretics of Dune,
by Frank Herbert. Published by Putnam in 1984 Additional resources -
|
This is a spectacularly useful plot device. This is the fifth of the six Dune books written by Frank Herbert; it is an interesting work, but inevitably derivative of the original work. The nullentropy bin allows the characters to have a true experience of the past.
The earliest use of this concept that I can find is the stasis box (Larry Niven).
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'Then he saw the geek ... leaning against one of the slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector...'
How long ago did Robert Heinlein write about skiing on dry alien worlds?
'There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.'
'A cable, here, from the controller to the interface plug... wires from that to the brain.'
