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"it slowly dawned on me that the landscape of science is maybe what interests people a great deal in science fiction."
- Gregory Benford
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| Probability Time Wave Tube | ||
| A device that allows the user to see every possible event. |
True genius is rare - but maybe it's better to have a great many minor tinkerers, than just one genius.
| "They had the tube then. They called it the PTW tube - Probability Time Wave. They'd been trying to make a television set that would see through walls..." "Their PTW tube caught and displayed every possibility that was ever to exist. And somewhere in that vast sweep of probability, every possible thing existed. Somewhere, the wildest dream of the wildest optimist was, and became fact." |
| Technovelgy from Elimination,
by John W. Campbell. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1936 Additional resources -
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The short story Elimination appears in the collection Who Goes There, published in 1948. These stories were published under the pseudonym Don A. Stuart.
See also the infinite improbability drive from Douglas Adams' 1979 novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Elimination
More Ideas
and Technology by John W. Campbell
Tech news articles related to Elimination
Tech news articles related to works by John W. Campbell
Probability Time Wave Tube-related
news articles:
- LEXID Sees Through Walls To Next Apartment
- See People Through Walls
| Roborock Saros Z70 Is A Robot Vacuum With An Arm |
| Secret Kill Switch Found In Yutong Buses |
| The Desert Ship Sailed In Imagination |
| The Zapata Air Scooter Would Be Great In A Science Fiction Story |
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"The robot solemnly hit a ball against the wall, picked it up and teed it, hit it again, over and again...'
'There was a wall ahead... It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
'...support the interior human structure against Jupiter’s pull.'
'Anything larger than a BB shot it picked up and placed in a tray...'
'The German chemists have discovered how to supply the needed elements in compact, undiluted form...'
'Compounds devised by the biochemists for the rapid building of bone...'
'The car faltered as the external command came to brake...'
'It is about the size and shape of a kitchen stool, gyro-stabilized...'
