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"I wrote many novels which … contained the element of the projected collective unconscious, which made them simply incomprehensible to anyone who read them, because they required the reader to accept my premise that each of us lives in a unique world."
- Philip K. Dick
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| Universal Technical Consultative Service | ||
| Interstellar travel plans calculated, reserved and confirmed. |
Well before the internet or the power of personal computers, when computers were controlled by skilled operators, and everything was hardcopy, Jack Vance proposed an enterprise that could have produced a Gatesian gazillionaire if things had turned out differently.
| "He went to an office of the Universal Technical Consultative Service, and gained the attention of an operator. 'Set up this problem,' said Gersen. 'Two ships leave the planet New Hope. One proceeds directly here, to Avente. The other goes to a red dwarf star, spends half a day, then comes to Avente, arriving ten days later. I want a list of the red dwarf stars which this second ship might have visited.'
The operator considered. 'There is oviously an ellipsoid shell here, the foci being New Hope and Alphanor. We must take into account the accelerations and decelerations, the probable coast periods and landing times. There will necessarily be a locus of most probability, and areas of diminishing probability.' 'Set up the problem so that the machine lists these stars in order of probability.' 'To what limits?' 'Oh - one in fifty. Include also the constants of these stars as given in the directory.' 'Very well, sir. The fee will be 25 SVU.' Gersen brought forth the money; the operator translated the problem into precise language, spoke into a microphone. Thirty seconds later a sheet of paper dropped from a slot. The operator glanced at it, signed his name, handed it without a word to Gersen." |
| Technovelgy from The Star King,
by Jack Vance. Published by Berkeley in 1964 Additional resources -
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Submitted by an anonymous reader.
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'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain...'
'The observation vehicle was of that peculiar variety used in conveying a large number of people across rough terrain.'
'The real border was defended by... a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats.'
'I ... set my automatic astronomical instruments to searching for a habitable planet.'
'...haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?'
