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"I'm a farm boy. It's very interesting; you can detect self-starting characteristics in this society and they are strongest among people who have had some kind of rural upbringing and a very impressionable stage."
- Frank Herbert
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| Instantaneous Communication | ||
| Communication over interplanetary distances faster than radio signals. |
An early description of the idea that communication over tens of millions of miles can happen instantaneously, in this case, from Mars to Earth with no time delay.
| I know there are many puzzling questions that scientists will think of, not the least of which is how the Martian is able to so closely control his robot when there is a vast gulf of millions of miles between them. Light takes an appreciable time to cross that distance. How then could the robots dodge the bombs in that aerial attack, when the very impulse from Mars, if it traveled at the speed of light (which is the fastest thing we know of) would take minutes to get here? X intimates, although it is not clear to me, that his controlling impulses, and the return impulses (of eyesight and hearing), travel instantaneously by means of some bizarre higher physics of which earthly science knows nothing. |
| Technovelgy from The Robot Aliens,
by Eando Binder. Published by Wonder Stories in 1935 Additional resources -
|
Compare to ultrawave from Triplanetary by EE 'Doc Smith, as well as these explicitly faster than light communication technovelgies:
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Robot Aliens
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and Technology by Eando Binder
Tech news articles related to The Robot Aliens
Tech news articles related to works by Eando Binder
| Birds Learn To Sing Pictures ala Frank Herbert's Distrans |
| Polish Turns Your Nail Into A Stylus |
| Huawei Pura X Folding Phattie Phone |
| Positioned Cybertrucks With Free Starlinks WiFi In LA |
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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...'
