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"I've come across more and more people who've actually tried reading science fiction and can't make it make sense."
- Samuel R. Delany
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| Helio-Beryllium | ||
| Unusual alloy combines a metal and a gas. |
The amazing spaceship Comet is full of modern conveniences, but what of the ship itself?
| I had seen the Comet before, but never so close. With a hull of helio-beryllium - the new light, inactive alloy of a metal and a gas - the ship was a cylinder about twenty feet long by fifteen in diameter, while a pointed nose stretched five feet farther at each end. Fixed in each point was a telescopic lens, while there were windows along the sides and at the top - all made, Garth informed us, of another form of the alloy almost as strong as the opaque variety. |
| Technovelgy from Out Around Rigel,
by Robert H. Wilson. Published by Street and Smith in 1931 Additional resources -
|
Star Trek fans who think that Gene Roddenberry invented everything will be surprised to note that helio-beryllium is an alloy that has a transparent variant. Wilson wrote about it forty years before anyone thought about transparent aluminum.
Compare to herculoy from The Howling Bounders (1949) by Jack Vance,
ultron from Armageddon: 2419 A.D. (1928) by Philip Frances Nowlan,
permalloy from Fugitives From Earth (1939) by Nelson S. Bond,
magnalloy from The Cave of Horror (1930) by S.P. Meek,
steelonium from Ralph 124c 41 + (1911) by Hugo Gernsback and
plasteel from Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Out Around Rigel
More Ideas
and Technology by Robert H. Wilson
Tech news articles related to Out Around Rigel
Tech news articles related to works by Robert H. Wilson
| Harvard Metamaterials Change Structure Instantly |
| Nano-Chainmail 2D Mechanically Interlocked Polymer |
| Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick |
| GNoME AI From DeepMind Invents Millions Of New Materials |
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'The crawling... object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
'Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses...'
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
'You couldn't have the capstone without the pyramid to hold it up.'
'the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers...'
I'm hoping that this procedure becomes a normal part of medical practice!
'... nothing was perfected until M. Pantalon announced the completion of his automatic valet.'
