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"I just can't be politic. I never learned how to do that and I don't like doing that. I think it's false."
- Harlan Ellison
 |
| Anti-Spying Device | ||
| Foolproof means of defending against spy beams. |
| It was not a large office, but it was quite spy-proof and quite undetectably so. Spy-beams trained upon it received neither a suspicious silence nor an even more suspicious static. They received, rather, a conversation constructed at random out of a vast stock of innocuous phrases in various tone and voices. |
| From Foundation,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Doubleday in 1951 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the cone of silence From Cease Fire (1958) by Frank Herbert, hush corner by Robert Heinlein in Double Star and the Fenton Silencer from an early Arthur C. Clarke story.
The earliest example I know of is the isolation barrage from Wandl, The Invader (1939) by Ray Cummings.
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'Its motion was so swift, complex, and perfect that at first I did not see it as a machine, in spite of its metallic glitter.'
Propulsion-assisted orbital decay, brought to you by SpaceX.
'He applied the tip of the instrument to the interior of the wound...'
'...what's to keep me from showing face, Man?'
'The Worldcraft bubble glittered, catching the light...'
'This is Elmer Schmitz, presenting to you the finalists in our Aviation Quiz Program...'
'Immediately an enormous apparatus fell on to her out of the ceiling...'
Maybe not, but we're seeing definite progress.
'These people are pieces of software called avatars.'
