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"Science fiction is really sociological studies of the future, things that the writer believes are going to happen by putting two and two together."
- Ray Bradbury
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| Fyunch(click) | ||
| An alien assigned to become an expert in just one person. |
When humans enter the Mote, the aliens use one of their techniques to try to understand them.
| “You always sound so cautious when you speak of the ship. Am I stepping on Navy secrets? It-is not the ship that concerns me, Rod. I’m Fyunch(click) to you. It means considerably more than just guide.” The Motie
gestured oddly. Rod had seen her do that before, when she was upset or annoyed.
“Just what does Fyunch(click) mean?” “I am assigned to you. You are a project, a masterwork. I am to leam as much about you as there is to know. I am to become an expert on you, My Lord Roderick Blaine, and you are to become a field of study to me. It-is not your gigantic, rigid, badly designed ship that interest-ss me, it-ss your attitudes toward that ship and the humans aboard, your degree of control over them, your interess-t in their welfare, et cetera.” |
| Technovelgy from The Mote in God's Eye,
by Larry Niven (w/J. Pournelle). Published by Simon & Schuster in 1974 Additional resources -
|
Compare to thought pattern divination from The Houses of Iszm (1954) by Jack Vance.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Mote in God's Eye
More Ideas
and Technology by Larry Niven (w/J. Pournelle)
Tech news articles related to The Mote in God's Eye
Tech news articles related to works by Larry Niven (w/J. Pournelle)
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| A Remarkable Coincidence |
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'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.'
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
