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"What television does is rent us friends and relatives who are quite satisfactory. This is quite something, to rent artificial friends and relatives right inside the house."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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| Provigil | ||
| A medication that makes the user 'untired' - not just more awake. |
Provigil is the name of a real drug (Modafinil) used to treat narcolepsy. It is sometimes referred to as a "wakefulness promoting agent" rather than a stimulant. It is marketed as improving 'alertness' and reducing 'excessive daytime sleepiness.
| "What is this?" the specialist asked.
"Provigil," he answered, taking one himself. "It's getting late and it's been a long day and we're all tired, right?" "Right," she said, taking the pill. "Not any more ... it makes you 'untired,' he said. "It's not an upper; it's sort of the reverse of a sleeping pill. You do tend to get stupid and you don't notice... |
| Technovelgy from When the Devil Dances,
by John Ringo. Published by Baen in 2002 Additional resources -
|
The idea of a pill or other means for doing without sleep recurs in science fiction. In his 1941 story Methuselah's Children, Robert Heinlein writes about a "sleep surrogate" that you could take in the morning after an inadequate night's sleep. Also, take a look at A-som, anti-somnolence drugs mentioned in Paul Di Filippo's 2006 story Shuteye for the Timebroker; this story examines what it would be like to eliminate sleep entirely.
Thanks to an anonymous reader for sending in this item.
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| 'Pregnancy Humanoids' From China Replace Moms |
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'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
'Briquet’s head seemed to think that to find and attach a new body to her head was as easy as to fit and sew a new dress.'
'...copy was turned out in a charming and entirely feminine handwriting.'
'It was almost unheard of for slunch to spread that fast...'
