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"It's hard to tell stories about critters that are not human. John W. Campbell tried it, in "Twilight," and everybody says it's a wonderful story, and nobody ever reads it twice."
- Jerry Pournelle
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| Nerve Control Lines | ||
| Designs that take control of human nervous systems. |
| It could have spent the night marking up the tableland with elled nerve control lines — he’d have to make sure he never looked directly at the ground — or it could simply be waiting for the arrival of the greater ship that had dropped it onto the planet...
Jamieson sighed with the intensity of his hope, and prepared to retreat. As he turned away, quite incidentally, accidentally, he glanced at the rock behind which he had shielded himself from possible direct fire. Glanced at it, and saw the elled lines in it. Intricate lines, based on a profound and inhuman study of the human nervous system. Jamieson recognized them, and stiffened in horror. He thought in anguish: Where, where am I supposed to fall? Which cliff? With a desperate will, wdth all his strength, he fought to retain his senses a moment longer. He strove to see the lines again. He saw, briefly, flashingly, five vertical and above them three lines that pointed east with their wavering ends. The pressure built up, up, up inside him... |
| Technovelgy from The Rull,
by A.E. van Vogt. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1948 Additional resources -
|
Now, from the point of view of the Rull:
Finally, with a tireless patience he examined the approaches to his own ship. At key points, he drew the lines that-could-seize-the-minds-of-men. There was satisfaction, shortly after the sun came up, in seeing the enemy “caught” and “compelled”.
Ultimately, the man succeeds in using food to prime a Pavlovian response in the Rull, eventually making his argument that the two races should make peace.
...he hovered on the perimeter of the man’s defensor energies, studying the lifeboat, and pondering the possible actions the other might take against him.
(Conditioning the Rull)
Compare to Van Goom's Gambit from Van Goom's Gambit (1966) by Victor Contoski, Display-Induced Epileptic Seizure from Press Enter (1984) by John Varley, BLIT from Blit (1988) by David Langford and the ugly T-shirt from Zero History (2010) by William Gibson.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Rull
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and Technology by A.E. van Vogt
Tech news articles related to The Rull
Tech news articles related to works by A.E. van Vogt
| Switzerland May Cap Population At Ten Million |
| California Governor Candidate Calls For Voting By Phone |
| Chinese Hospital Tries Vonnegut's 'Harrison Bergeron' Cosplay |
| A Remarkable Coincidence |
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'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
'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.'
