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"Science fiction has gotten more accurate as we've gotten closer to the present, because science fiction stories have not only attracted, but also generated current scientists."
- Larry Niven
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| Photosensitive Pigment | ||
| Special paint that stays 'blank' until exposed to a scene. |
Robert Melville's sand schooner developed problems; he was picked up by a beautiful woman and taken back to her island home. The strange story of this woman and her companions slowly surfaces in a series of unique paintings.
| As I looked at the empty surface of the fresh canvas she ordered brought down from her studio, I wondered what image of me would emerge from its blank pigments. Like all paintings produced in Vermillion Sands at that time, it would not actually need the exercise of the painter's hand. Once the pigments had been selected, the photosensitive paint would produce an image of whatever still life or landscape it was exposed to. Although a lengthy process, requiring an exposure of four or five days, it had the immense advantage that there was no need for the subject's continuous presence. Given a few hours each day, the photosensitive pigments would anneal themselves into the contours of a likeness.
This discontinuity was responsible for the entire charm and magic of these paintings. Instead of a mere photographic replica, the movements of the sitter produced a series of multiple projections, perhaps with the analytic forms of cubism, or, less severely, a pleasant impressionistic blurring. However, these unpredictable variations on the face and form of the sitter were often disconcerting in their perception of character. |
| Technovelgy from Cry Hope, Cry Fury!,
by J.G. Ballard. Published by Mercury Publications, Inc. in 1966 Additional resources -
|
As you might imagine, this last characteristic of photosensitive pigments gives great latitude to a talented writer. Ballard puts together a terrific story with this plot "device."
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Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
'So, Ender, we will now begin your education.'
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
