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"I just can't be politic. I never learned how to do that and I don't like doing that. I think it's false."
- Harlan Ellison
 |
| Ferretscope | ||
| A counter-surveillance tool to detect the presence of listening devices. |
| The woman took my arm and urged me down the corridor. I glanced back and saw Zeb silhouetted in in the portal, covering our rear. My guide paused and pushed me into an almost pitchblack alcove, then she took from the folds of her robes a small object which I took to be a pocket ferretscope, from the small dial that glowed faintly on its side. She ran it up and down and around, snapped it off and returned it to her person.
"Now you can talk," she said softly. "It's safe." I felt a gentle touch at my sleeve. "Judith?" I whispered. "Yes," she answered, so softly I could hardly hear her. |
| Technovelgy from If This Goes On...,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1940 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the eavesdropper from James Blish's 1957 novel Cities in Flight.
Thanks to Connor Lawrence for submitting this item.
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'...each of them is a neural mapping of the mind of a Tibetan monk who actually lived.'
'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain, through the mediation of the electronic brain in the leg.'
'... every veephone on the continent would display, over and over, two propositions.'
'Completely silent, accurate up to about twenty meters. No recoil...'
'He wore spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.'
