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"...a few centuries of coherent humanist thought, set against a million odd years of evolved killer ape tendency. No-one's going to give you very good odds on humanism, are they?"
- Richard Morgan
 |
| Hive-Sign | ||
| Specialized sign language developed by an offshoot of humanity. |
| One of the busily working specialists finally stopped and peered across the lab at Hellstrom. The worker signaled in Hive-sign, fingers shaping a "hurry-up" symbol against the tubular construction in a way that, in a flashing instant, said plainly, "Don't delay this." In the same movement
of hand and fingers, the specialist pressed the symbol against a dark forehead, saying just as plainly, "Your interruptive presence delays my thinking."
...Hellstrom managed to restrain a grin until he had turned away and was headed back across the lab. The sound of the work here seemed no different to him as he moved, but when he glanced back from the doorway, he saw several of the specialists clustered into a busily communicative group, their hands darting and flashing in Hive-sign. He caught the symbol for "heat" several times, but most of the other symbols escaped him. The researchers had developed their own language for use among themselves, he knew. |
| Technovelgy from Hellstrom's Hive,
by Frank Herbert. Published by Bantam Books in 1972 Additional resources -
|
Compare to atomician sign language from The Faceless Men (1948) by Leo Zagat and the humming-code from Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert.
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'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
'It seems that at one time computers were designed directly by human beings.'
'...the spot was a lonely one in an uncharted region, far from the normal lanes of space traffic.'
