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"Every scientist worth his salt that I know of has read science fiction."
- Greg Bear
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| Flash Suit | ||
| Special suit for practice battles. |
| It was the largest compartment that contained the prize. It looked like a spacesuit at first glance, complete with helmet and gloves. But it wasn't. There was no airtight seal. Still, it would effectively cover the whole body. It was thickly padded. It was also a little stiff...
The flash suits were designed for wars fought with harmless light; they offered little protection and seriously hampered movement if it came to hand-to-hand fighting in nullo. Half the boys were flashed, anyway, and couldn't fight; but the stiffness of their suits made them potentially useful... |
| Technovelgy from Ender's Game,
by Orson Scott Card. Published by Tor in 1985 Additional resources -
|
The flash suits were lighted; they went dark wherever they were 'frozen':
It's important to note that the novel is based on Card's 1977 short story of the same name. It contains the battleroom material. It's important because people familiar with Lazer Tag and its variants weren't developed until the mid-1980's.
As it turns out, there really is such a thing as a "flash suit" - it's unrelated to Card's idea. It is a thermal-protective garment made of heavy weight NOMEX, PBI or other flame-retardant material. They can provide protection for temperatures of up to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
From the number of lights showing on their flash suits, Bee could see that three of them were disabled and two of them damaged...
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Flash Suit-related
news articles:
- BRUISE Smart Injury Detection Suit
| Tumblin' Tumbleweed Rovers To Eplore Mars |
| Tentacled Robot Captures Space Debris |
| Reflect Orbital Sunlight On Demand |
| Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space |
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'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
'Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows.'
'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'
'The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe- like independence.'
