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"I started writing in the 1930's when I was eighteen years old. And deep inside me I'm still eighteen and it's still 1938."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Reality Tape | ||
| The medium upon which the life experience of an electric ant - a robotic person - is presented. |
| "...The punched tape roll above your heart mechanism is not a programming turret but is in fact a reality-supply construct. All sense stimuli received by your central neurological system emanate from that unit and tampering with it would be risky if not terminal..."
If I cut the tape, he realized, my world will disappear. |
| Technovelgy from The Electric Ant,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Mercury Press in 1969 Additional resources -
|
Compare to Life Chamber from The Chamber of Life (1929) by G. Peyton Wertenbaker, the feelies from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), virtual reality from The Theatre and Its Double (1938) by Antonin Artaud, the permanent hookup from Spectator Sport (1950) by John MacDonald, the Saga technology from Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars (1956), dead-show from Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1974) by James Tiptree, Jr. and stimsim from William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984).
Compare also to video glasses from Islands in the Net (1988) by Bruce Sterling, Tru-Vu Lenses from Earth (1990) by David Brin, data goggles from Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson,eyecaps from Starfish (1999) by Peter Watts, overlay specs from Halting State (2007) by Charles Stross and HUD glasses from Daemon (2009) by Daniel Suarez.
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'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'
'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'
