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"The answer to the problem of information overload on the Net is reputations… engineer a system called a reputation server."
- Neal Stephenson
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| Talisman | ||
| Device that causes beings nearby to experience truth and peace; works only in the hands of rare adepts. |
There are conflicts at many levels in this story; between people, between groups here on earth and between other civilizations. The Talisman is a sacred object; only a very special person can make it work.
| The Talisman could only be operated by certain types of beings with certain types of minds and something else besides ... The Talisman was placed in the custody of the most capable, or the most efficient, or the most devoted (whichever it might be) of the galactic sensitives, who carried it from star to star in a sort of eternal progression. |
| Technovelgy from Way Station,
by Clifford Simak. Published by Doubleday in 1963 Additional resources -
|
Simak does a remarkable job in putting into words what is needed in a contentious world. This great story won the Hugo award for best novel; it loses absolutely nothing in the years since it was published.
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| A Remarkable Coincidence |
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'...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?'
'It hurtled on down with inconceivable speed until it was visible as thousands of tiny robot planes...'
