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"This is a predictive tool I've used: There are goals we've sought for ten thousand years, and we'll go on seeking them. Instant transport and travel, immortality (or at least longevity and miracle cures.), instant learning …"
- Larry Niven

Fuligin  
  A material the color of which is blacker than black.  

Fuligin-colored materials can be used in cloaks, breeches and pennons.

I put on the cloak... the hue fuligin, which is darker than black, admirably erases all folds, bunchings and gatherings so far as the eye is concerned, showing only a featureless dark.
Technovelgy from The Shadow of the Torturer, by Gene Wolfe.
Published by Simon & Schuster in 1980
Additional resources -

Fuligin is the color of the Torturer's guild. The word is probably derived from fuliginous, an archaic word meaning sooty.

The earliest reference to this idea appears to be the black coating from E.E. 'Doc Smith's 1939 novel Gray Lensman.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Shadow of the Torturer
  More Ideas and Technology by Gene Wolfe
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  Tech news articles related to works by Gene Wolfe

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