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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| Resilian | ||
| A natural fiber that is as strong as steel. |
Nature often provides strong structures or fibers in a organic setting. Fertile ground for the imagination of science fiction writers.
| Blantham reached in his pocket,
produced a small white box. Magnus Ridolph, snapping back the top, found within a
cluster of inch-long purple tubes, twisting and
curling away from a central node. They were
glossy, flexible, and interspersed with long
pink fibers. He shook his head politely.
“I’m afraid I can’t identify the object.” “It’s ticholama,” said Blantham. "Resilian in its natural state.” “Indeed!” and Magnus Ridolph examined the purple cluster with new interest. “Each of those tubes,” said Blantham, “is built of countless spirals of resilian molecules, each running the entire length of the tube. That’s the property, naturally, which gives resilian its tremendous elasticity and tensile strength.” |
| From The Howling Bounders,
by Jack Vance. Published by Startling Stories in 1949 Additional resources -
|
As is Vance's wont, he provides additional details:
H e leaned back in his chair, tapped
his pencil thoughtfully against his
notebook. He returned to the mnemiphot,
dialed ahead to the preparation of resilian
from the raw ticholama. The purple tubes,
he found, were frozen in liquid air, passed
through a macerator, which pulverized the
binding gums, soaked in hesso-hexylic acid,
then alcohol, dried in a centrifuge, a process
which left the fibres in a felt-like mat. This
mat was combed until the fibers lay parallel,
impregnated with hesso-penthol and compressed into a homogeneous substance — resilian.
Compare to krimskell fiber from Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert.
He stepped into the TCI office, where he
was received with courtesy. He requested and
was permitted use of the mnemiphot. Seating
himself comfortably, he found the code for
resilian, ticked it into the selector, attentively
pursued the facts, pictures, formulae, statistics drifting across the screen. He noted the
tensile strength — about the same as mild
steel, and saw with interest that resilian
dampened with hesso-penthol welded instantly into another piece of resilian.
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'... the brain is no longer subjected to the accustomed pull, and it expands slightly in all directions.'
