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"I never saw why I had to give up science in order to write, or the other way around, so I didn't!"
- Gregory Benford
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| Remote-Control Slavery | ||
| Mental control (possibly mediated by radio waves) of individuals of other species. |
| “We’re only beginning to understand this, and of course I don’t have much of the inside information myself, but as I piece it together it seems that these beings make use of lower life-forms, turning them essentially into radio-controlled robots. They’ll use anything with limbs and mobility. They started with certain animals of their own planet, a small dolphin-like form perhaps on the threshold of intelligence, and worked through them to achieve a space drive. Then they got to neighboring planets—land planets— and took control of pseudoprimates, protochimps of some kind. They look for fingers. Manual dexterity counts a great deal with them. At present their sphere of influence covers some eighty light-years and appears to be spreading at an exponential rate.”
Muller shook his head. “This is worse nonsense than the stuff you were handing me about a cure. Look, there’s a limiting velocity for radio transmission, right? If they’re controlling flunkeys from eighty light-years away, it’ll take eighty years for any command to reach its destination. Every twitch of a muscle, every trifling movement—” “They can leave their home world,” said Rawlins. “But if they’re so big—” “They’ve used their slave beings to build gravity tanks. They also have a star drive. All their colonies are run by overseers in orbit a few thousand kilometers up, floating in a simulated home-world environment. It takes one overseer to run one planet. I suppose they rotate tours of duty.” |
| Technovelgy from The Man in the Maze,
by Robert Silverberg. Published by Avon Books in 1969 Additional resources -
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'Space-sickness is one of the most unpleasant sensations that a human being can experience. Not all are subject to it...'
'...I saw a nice black heavy-looking cloud sailing by just now, and I can get the electrical machine out in five minutes to draw it down.'
'From a distance it could resolve the cosmic rays reflected from various substances.'
'The answer to the dumb student's prayer.'
'He had travelled the space-lanes of the solar system for the greater part of his life...'
'The dinner was excellent. It was completely vegetarian — grown in specially prepared gardens in this Moon base...'
'Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind.'
'It was a relief to enter one of the comfortable autos, whisper a direction down the tube, and just know that you would be taken to your destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest manner.'
'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
