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"At its best, SF is the medium in which our miserable certainty that tomorrow will be different from today in ways we can't predict, can be transmuted to a sense of excitement and anticipation, occasionally evolving into awe."
- John Brunner
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| Eyecaps | ||
| Corneal cap that acts as a pair of goggles for extreme depth diving. |
Psychological distance and isolation are important themes in the book. The use of eyecaps, which conceal the eyes, are used to great advantage in emphasizing the isolation of the characters.
| There are mirrors everywhere in Beebe; they're supposed to increase the apparent size of one's personal space. Sometimes Clarke shuts her eyes to hide from the reflections forever being thrown back at her. It doesn't help. She clenches her lids and feels the corneal caps beneath them, covering her eyes like smooth white cataracts. |
| Technovelgy from Starfish,
by Peter Watts. Published by Tor Books in 1999 Additional resources -
|
Eyecaps are used as photomultipliers, making it possible to see in extremely low light levels. At the depths explored in the novel, greater than 2000 feet, the ocean is absolutely dark. The only illumination comes from occasional magama flows and from bioluminescent fish.
The eyecap is an interesting throwback to the earliest eye-goggles; Persian divers used underwater eye-goggles made from polished shells.
Compare to magic spectacles from Pygmalion's Spectacles (1935) by Stanley G. Weinbaum, video glasses from Islands in the Net (1988) by Bruce Sterling, Tru-Vu Lenses from Earth (1990) by David Brin, data goggles from Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson, overlay specs from Halting State (2007) by Charles Stross and HUD glasses from Daemon (2009) by Daniel Suarez.
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'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'
'... with the Master-operator all you have to do is push one! A remarkable achievement!'
'Not like me. A T-1000, advanced prototype. A mimetic poly-alloy. Liquid metal.'
'It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
'The massive feet working the pedals, arms and hands flashing and glinting...'
'There were cubic miles of it, and it glistened like a silvery Christmas tree...'
'Jason had been guiding the caravan of cars as usual...'
"The robot solemnly hit a ball against the wall, picked it up and teed it, hit it again, over and again...'
