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"What I have in my stories is ethics. Ethics and morality are very different cups of tea. I adhere to a very strict rigor of personal ethics and I demand it of those around me as well."
- Harlan Ellison
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| Provigil | ||
| A medication that makes the user 'untired' - not just more awake. |
Provigil is the name of a real drug (Modafinil) used to treat narcolepsy. It is sometimes referred to as a "wakefulness promoting agent" rather than a stimulant. It is marketed as improving 'alertness' and reducing 'excessive daytime sleepiness.
| "What is this?" the specialist asked.
"Provigil," he answered, taking one himself. "It's getting late and it's been a long day and we're all tired, right?" "Right," she said, taking the pill. "Not any more ... it makes you 'untired,' he said. "It's not an upper; it's sort of the reverse of a sleeping pill. You do tend to get stupid and you don't notice... |
| Technovelgy from When the Devil Dances,
by John Ringo. Published by Baen in 2002 Additional resources -
|
The idea of a pill or other means for doing without sleep recurs in science fiction. In his 1941 story Methuselah's Children, Robert Heinlein writes about a "sleep surrogate" that you could take in the morning after an inadequate night's sleep. Also, take a look at A-som, anti-somnolence drugs mentioned in Paul Di Filippo's 2006 story Shuteye for the Timebroker; this story examines what it would be like to eliminate sleep entirely.
Thanks to an anonymous reader for sending in this item.
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'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
