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"Science fiction is the very literature of change. In fact, it is the only such literature we have."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Psychic Probe | ||
| A device capable of discerning truthful information in a living human brain. |
| "...I might have made more progress with my prisoner were my Psychic Probe in proper order."
The secretary's eyebrows lifted. "You have a Probe?" "An old one. A superannuated one which fails me the one time I needed it. I set it up during the prisoner's sleep, and received nothing. So much for the Probe. I have tried it on my own men and the reaction is quite proper, but again there is not one among my staff of tech-men who can tell me why it fails upon the prisoner. Ducem Barr, who is a theoretician of parts, though no mechanic, says the psychic structure of the prisoner may be unaffected by the Probe since from childhood he has been subjected to alien environments and neural stimuli. |
| Technovelgy from Foundation and Empire,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Doubleday in 1952 Additional resources -
|
I think that this device is different from a machine that determines whether spoken statements are true or false.
Compare to the psychoprobe from Satellite Five (1938) by Arthur K. Barnes, the
mechanical judge from The Lord of Tranerica (1939) by Stanton A. Coblentz, the
quizzer from Agent of Vega (1949) by James Schmitz, the
truth meter from The Star Beast (1954) by Robert Heinlein, the
cephaloscope from The Houses of Iszm (1954) by Jack Vance, the
veridicator from Little Fuzzy (1962) by H. Beam Piper.
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'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
