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"did I had an extremely expensive wife - she would see a new car that she liked and just buy it... under California law I was bound to buy her debts. I think I turned out 16 novels in five years."
- Philip K. Dick
 |
| Nullentropy Bin | ||
| A compartment in which entropy was halted. |
In the novel, the ghola Duncan Idaho encounters objects from Dune's past. The nullentropy bin is a great plot device, keeping even food in a state of preservation.
| Duncan sat alone at the autoscrubbed table, a cup of brown liquid in front of him. Teg recognized the smell: one of the many melange-laced items from the nullentropy bins. The bins were a treasure house of exotic foods, clothing, weapons, and other artifacts - a museum whose value could not be calculated. There was a thin layer of dust all through the globe but no deterioration of the things stored here. |
| Technovelgy from Heretics of Dune,
by Frank Herbert. Published by Putnam in 1984 Additional resources -
|
This is a spectacularly useful plot device. This is the fifth of the six Dune books written by Frank Herbert; it is an interesting work, but inevitably derivative of the original work. The nullentropy bin allows the characters to have a true experience of the past.
The earliest use of this concept that I can find is the stasis box (Larry Niven).
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'So, Ender, we will now begin your education.'
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'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.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
