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"I think a lot of kids whose mental growth outruns their maturity gravitate to science fiction."
- Dan Simmons
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| Plastex | ||
| A combination of plaster and latex, it allows houses to change shape for you. |
The psychotropic houses of Vermillion Sands were able to mirror the feelings of their owners. They could also change shape as required.
| It was a beautiful room all right, with opaque plastex walls and white fluo-glass ceiling, but something terrible had happened there. As it responded to me, the ceiling lifting slightly and the walls growing less opaque, reflecting my perspective-seeking eye, I noticed that curious mottled knots were forming, indicating where the room had been strained and healed faultily. Deep hidden rifts began to distort the sphere, ballooning out one of the alcoves like a bubble of overextended gum.
"Lively responses, aren't they, Mr. Talbot?" He put his hand on the wall behind us. The plastex swam and whirled like boiling toothpaste, then extruded itself into a small ledge. Stamers sat down on the lip, which quickly expanded to match the contours of his body, providing back and arm rests. 'Of course, you're getting nothing but custom-built units here,' Stamers said. 'The vinyl chains in this plastex were hand-crafted literally molecule by molecule.' |
| Technovelgy from The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista,
by J.G. Ballard. Published by Amazing Fact and Science Fiction in 1962 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the memory plastic from Larry Niven's 1969 story Death by Ecstasy.
The house trees of Jack Vance's 1964 novel The Houses of Iszm also tailored themselves to owners, if more slowly. Contrast plastex, which does what you want, to the Bambakias hotel of Bruce Sterling's 1998 novel Distraction, which actually tells you what to do, construction-wise.
I don't know if Ballard knowingly reused the word "plastex" or not. The word was trademarked in the 1930's by a toy company; it is used in reference to a bouncy kind of plastic.
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista
More Ideas
and Technology by J.G. Ballard
Tech news articles related to The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista
Tech news articles related to works by J.G. Ballard
Plastex-related
news articles:
- HypoSurface Walls Are Full Of Life
- Touchy Feely Trigger Point Mouldings
- Self-Healing Concrete Uses Bacteria For Healing
- 'Supra B 'Toys Soon Self-Healing
- Self-Healing Batteries
- Outdoor Testing For Self-Healing Concrete
- Fungi-Infused Concrete Repairs Itself
- MXene Hydrogel Skin For Robots Flexes And Senses
| Amazon Blimp Parent Drone Concept |
| Tortoise Mobile Smart Stores |
| Sony Pocket Air Conditioner Is Phil Dick's Idea! |
| ROAM Robotics Skiing Exoskeleton |
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
