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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Happicuppa Coffee Bush | ||
| A species of coffee bush designed for ease of harvesting. |
| ...the Happicuppa coffee bush was designed so that all of its beans could ripen simultaneously, and coffee could be grown on huge plantations and harvested with machines. This threw the small growers out of business and reduced both them and their labourers to starvation-level poverty. |
| Technovelgy from Oryx and Crake,
by Margaret Atwood. Published by Nan A. Talese in 2003 Additional resources -
|
Mechanical harvesters have been in development since the 1960's; good results have been seen since the 1980's. However, the continuing problem is that the beans on a given plant can vary by several months. Some growers who use mechanical harvesters use a strategy that utilzes a number of passes some weeks apart. The beans on the top of the plant tend to ripen first.
SF fans, don't forget about coffiest (Pohl and Kornbluth) and syn-cof (Philip K. Dick).
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Tech news articles related to works by Margaret Atwood
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'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
'Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows.'
'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
