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"Cyberspace is a metaphor that allows us to grasp this place where since about the time of the second world war we've increasingly done so many of the things that we think of as civilization."
- William Gibson
 |
| Self-Lighting Cigarette | ||
| A cigarette with a matchhead built in. |
| When they reached her apartment she put tobacco and drink close to him, then went to her retiring room, threw off her street clothes and put on a soft loose robe that made her look even smaller and younger than she had looked before. When she rejoined Lazarus, he stood up, struck a cigarette for her, then paused as he handed it to her and gave a gallant and indelicate whistle. |
| From Methuselah's Children,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1941 Additional resources -
|
This same item is also seen in Double Star, which Heinlein published in 1951:
I could have played him on boards, or read a speech in his place, within
twenty minutes. But this
part, as I understood it, would be more than such an interpretation; Dak
had hinted that I would have to
convince people who knew hlin well, perhaps in intimate circumstances. This
is surpassingly more
difficult. Does he take sugar in his coffee? If so, how much? Which hand
does he use to strike a cigarette
and with what gesture? I got the answer to that one and planted it deep in
my mind even as I phrased the
question; the simulacrum in front of me struck a cigarette in a fashion
that convinced me that he had
used matches and the oldfashioned sort of gasper for years before he had
gone along with the march of
so-called progress.
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