Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"Looking back through history, I see no evidence for humanity making the best of things, and I think it's a pretty safe bet that's an on-going trend."
- Richard Morgan
 |
| Flying Wire | ||
| Barbed wire that seeks to expand to its remembered size and extent. |
| …see them coming now, uptown there, the choppers, and the police have mentioned flying wire.
A moan followed the last words and the crowd shuddered, the brownian movement reversed and they slowly began drifting uptown, out of Union Square, away from Fourteenth Street. The old people in this crowd knew all about flying wire... The copters came low and the bales of wire fell from their bottoms. Rusty iron bales of barbed wire that thudded and clanked down hard enough to burst their sealed wrapping. This was not ordinary barbed wire. It had a tempered-steel core of memory wire, metal that no matter how it was twisted or coiled would return to its original shape when the restraints were removed. Where ordinary wire would have lain in a heaped tangle this fought to regain its remembered form, moving haltingly like a blind beast as the strains and stresses were relieved, uncoiling and stretching along the street. Policemen wearing heavy gloves grabbed the ends and guided it in the right direction to form a barrier down the middle of the road. Two expanding coils met and fought a mindless battle, locking together and climbing into the air only to fall and struggle again and ‘squirm on in a writhing union. When the last strand stopped scratching across the pavement the street was blocked by a yard high and a yard wide wall of spiked wire. |
| Technovelgy from Make Room! Make Room!,
by Harry Harrison. Published by Impulse in 1966 Additional resources -
|
The basic idea for "memory wire", the active core of flying wire, is probably Nitinol. This material was created in 1959 and subsequently patented in 1965. Nitinol was accidentally discovered by Dr. William J. Buehler, who was working at the U.S. Naval Ordnance Laboratory (NOL). He coined the name Ni-Ti-NOL by combining the chemical symbols for Nickel and Titanium and the laboratory's acronym.
My earlier story Biomimetic Robot Animals - Not All Are Cute shows a practical use for Nitinol.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Make Room! Make Room!
More Ideas
and Technology by Harry Harrison
Tech news articles related to Make Room! Make Room!
Tech news articles related to works by Harry Harrison
| Terraformer Industries Make Methane |
| Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction |
| Infrared Contact Lenses To See In The Dark |
| Can 'Tactical Umbrellas' Shield One From Drones |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Science Fiction Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
