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"I share the view of Pythagoras that the world is number. The ultimate substrate of the universe is math. There's no way to test that - it's pure metaphysical speculation."
- Bart Kosko
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| Sleep Machine | ||
| A device guaranteeing a good night's sleep. |
An early description of this idea; I can't think of an earlier reference for the phrase "sleep machine".
| When Jim Eiler entered the bedroom, he saw that Marta was stretched full-length in the anti-gravity energies flowing upward over the mattress of her bed. She sprawled there in the careless abandon of a person who had dropped all of the world’s cares, at least for one night, the cords from the sleep machine looping down to her head from the elastic holder at the top of the bed. His first impulse was to turn off the sleep machine and awaken her, his second impulse was to let sleeping wives lie...
If sprawling in the anti-gravity energies was heaven, turning on the sleep machine was paradise. He always had the vague impression just at this point that blessed angel wings materialized under him, and that as they lifted him up, he slipped away into some paradise of wonderful delight. |
| Technovelgy from Short Trip to Nowhere,
by R.M. Williams. Published by IF in 1965 Additional resources -
|
Compare to sleep generator from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), by Arthur C. Clarke and the napcap from Saturn's Race (2000), by Larry Niven (w/S. Barnes).
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'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'
'Our planes are going to start bringing in bales of discarded plastics...'
'... completely forgetting the ship at sight of the awesome figure and great head of the giant Gaut...'
'So, Ender, we will now begin your education.'
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'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
