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"As the rate of technological development speeds up, the gap between science fiction and what we’re living now is getting narrower all the time."
- Richard Morgan
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| Gauzy | ||
| A feather-light tent, made of a fabric just one molecule thick. |
Hasan is an exemplary assassin. Some people have a talent for music - they can pick up an instrument and play it within a few hours. Others have a talent for weapons.
| Hasan always pitched a Gauzy - a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough. He never slept in it, though. He just used it to stash his junk.
I seated myself on a log before the fire and Hasan ducked inside his Gauzy. He emerged a moment later with his pipe and a block of hardened, resinous-looking stuff, which he proceeded to scale and grind. He mixed it with a bit of burley and then filled the pipe. After he got it going with a stick from the fire, he sat smoking it beside me. "I do not want to kill you, Karagee," he said. |
| Technovelgy from This Immortal,
by Roger Zelazny. Published by Ace Science Fiction in 1965 Additional resources -
|
Up to the 1960's, tents were mostly made from canvas or similar materials, and used steel supports. A tent big enough for four people was not something you wanted to carry around if you could avoid it. However, tents made of more modern materials, like nylon, and the supports were made from aluminum. The Gauzy takes this process a step further, with the lightest possible material used - just one molecule thick.
For another example of an extremely thin material, see the entry for light sail and also the digital paper pad from KOP (2007) by Warren Hammond.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from This Immortal
More Ideas
and Technology by Roger Zelazny
Tech news articles related to This Immortal
Tech news articles related to works by Roger Zelazny
Gauzy-related
news articles:
- Graphene - Nanofabric One Atom Thick
- New Materials One Atom Thick Extracted With Micromechanical Cleavage
- Graphene Reveals Fine Structure Constant
- Graphene Is Also Super Strong
- New Material Is One Molecule Thick
- Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick
| Why Not Move A Warehouse District? |
| Amazon Will Send You Heinlein's Knockdown Cabin |
| Elegant Bivouac Shelter Produces Water And Electricity |
| AI-THu Shapeshifting Transformer Home |
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'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
'Then he became aware of a gentle pressure pushing him away from the ship.'
'And now they wre busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on...'
'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
