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"I love that computer science has made mathematics into something like an experimental science. I was never all that good at proving things, but I love doing computer experiments."
- Rudy Rucker
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| Polyfrequency Neutralizer | ||
| Dissolves projected solidographs (holograms). |
How can you get rid of telesolidograph images, designed to terrify your allies?
| A vast wolfish shape materialized from the misty gray of the walls at the other end of the
Chamber. Its eyes were like two sooty hearths filled with dying embers. Toward the Council table it
stalked, big as a house, the very incarnation of skulking, slavering destruction...
“Dissolve it!” Goniface called sharply to Cousin Deth. Then he rose, too. “The thing is only a telesolidographic projection—as all of you must realize!”...
 (Telesolidograph from 'Gather Darkness' by Fritz Leiber) Partially reassured, the archpriests noted that there was indeed a certain transparency to the advancing monster, so you could dimly see through it to the wall beyond; and it was a ghostly slaver that dripped in ropes from the gigantic jaws. Moreover, the great paws with their foot-long nails seemed sometimes to step a little above the floor and sometimes a little below... “There was, of course, no need to dissolve it,” said Goniface coldly. “I merely wished to demonstrate conclusively its solidographic nature. Our Fourth Circle brethren were able to dissipate it with the recently invented polyfrequency neutralizer. The thing was purely photonic in nature and yielded quickly to an application of the principle of interference. All phantasms employed by the so-called New Witchcraft are of a similar sort. |
| From Gather, Darkness!,
by Fritz Leiber. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1943 Additional resources -
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'The Consul remembered his first glimpse of the kilometer-long treeship...'
'Do you know what window washing used to cost by the hour?'
'Once the target is confirmed, it uses an IR laser to send a coded signal back to the parent, clearing it to attack.'
'I filled your bullet hole with flesh putty and the lattice.'
'... it will be easy to form an alphabet which shall enable us to converse with the inhabitants of the moon.'
'From the tower's huge octagonal base radiate wide silvery strips...'
'It was about five feet long... a black bullet head and red camera eyes.'
'The Law Society has strict rules on the use of pseudo-intelligent software...'
