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"The point sticks in your head: physics rules. Virtue does not triumph unless the physics allows it."
- Larry Niven
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| Control Screen | ||
| An alien display device. |
Earthman Jan Rodricks had stowed away on one of the Overlord's space ships, hoping to see their world. Sent back to Earth, he watched as the aliens piloted the great spacecraft.
| He stood behind the three pilots (why, he wondered, did they need so many?) watching the patterns come and go on the great screen that dominated the control room. The colors and shapes it showed were meaningless to him: he assumed that they were conveying information which in a vessel designed for men would have been displayed on banks of meters. But sometimes the screen showed the surrounding star fields, and soon, he hoped, it would be showing Earth. |
| Technovelgy from Childhood's End,
by Arthur C. Clarke. Published by Not Known in 1953 Additional resources -
|
Later in the novel, Rodricks is dictating his description of an event to Karellen the Overlord:
"Is this how it talks to you, Karellen, in colors and shapes like these? I remember the control screens on your ship and the patterns that went across them, speaking to you in some visual language which your eyes could read..."
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More Ideas
and Technology from Childhood's End
More Ideas
and Technology by Arthur C. Clarke
Tech news articles related to Childhood's End
Tech news articles related to works by Arthur C. Clarke
Control Screen-related
news articles:
- Multi-Touch Interaction Overlord Control Screen
| Transparent MicroLED Screen From Samsung |
| Augmented Reality Book Covers Reveal The Inner Book |
| TCL CSOT 17-Inch Printed OLED Scrolling Display |
| Looking Glass Display Good Enough For Science Fiction, Fantasy |
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
