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"It's also important to vary your stimuli. I always look for new things to shock the system. Just as you make muscles grow by shocking them, you make the mind grow by shocking it."
- Bart Kosko
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| Airmaker | ||
| A device that creates a specific breathable mix directly from the atmosphere. |
It seems clear that at least part of the breathable mix required for Trinocs can be taken directly from the atmosphere.
| "How did you get a Trinoc to come?" "Don't tell me he's still here." "Oh, no. His air was running out and he had to go home." "A little white lie," Louis informed her. "A Trinoc airmaker lasts for weeks." |
| Technovelgy from Ringworld,
by Larry Niven. Published by Ballantine in 1970 Additional resources -
|
This is actually a pretty good idea, since similar products called "oxygen concentrators" are starting to replace oxygen cylinders. They are substantially less dangerous that cylinders of oxygen.
Aliens in sf sometimes require something in addition to the elements of Earth's air. In his classic 1953 novel Childhood's End, for example, Arthur C. Clarke's Overlords sometimes needed more than the atmosphere provides:
Compare to David Brin's oxygen hip flask from his 1990 novel Earth.
Though they [the Overlords] seemed able to breathe terrestrial air, they sometimes carried small cylinders of gas from which they refreshed themselves occasionally.
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| I Didn't Know You Can Already Buy Flesh Putty |
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'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'If you surf over a bump... If you surf over a pothole...'
'Then the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and they stood an instant transfixed...'
'Noiselessly, on rubber-tired wheels, they journeyed...'
'...copy two of the original document no longer can be superimposed on copy one.'
My prize robot, tall, dashing would speak and act for me...
'A palm lock must be keyed to one individual's hand shape and palm lines.'
'I have transferred the ego of a dog to a synthetic dog brain in the skull case of a robot dog.'
