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"SF looks towards an imaginary future, while fantasy, by and large, looks towards an imaginary past."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Optical-Effect Suit | ||
| An invisibility garment. |
This is a fairly early presentation of this idea; William Gibson updates the concept in his mimetic polycarbon suit from his 1984 novel Neuromancer.
| I pulled the door wide, took out a limp, fish-scale textured coverall with heavy fittings moulded into the fabric at the small of the back and at the ankles. I pulled off my jacket, struggled into the garment: it was called an optical-effect suit, and it was one of the CBI’s best-kept secrets. It had the unusual property of absorbing some wavelengths of light and re-emitting them in the infrared, reflecting others in controlled patterns. It was auto-tuned over the entire visible spectrum, and was capable of duplicating any background pattern short of a clan Ginsberg tartan. I couldn’t walk down a crowded avenue in it without causing a few puzzled stares, but in any less crowded setting, it was as close an approximation of a cloak of invisibility as science had come up with. |
| Technovelgy from The Hounds of Hell,
by Keith Laumer. Published by IF in 1964 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the scramble suit from A Scanner Darkly (1977) by Philip K. Dick, the mimetic polycarbon suit from Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson and the abglanz from The Mountain in the Sea (2022) by Ray Naylor.
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Tech news articles related to The Hounds of Hell
Tech news articles related to works by Keith Laumer
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'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'
'He wore spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.'
'... with the Master-operator all you have to do is push one! A remarkable achievement!'
'Not like me. A T-1000, advanced prototype. A mimetic poly-alloy. Liquid metal.'
'It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
'The massive feet working the pedals, arms and hands flashing and glinting...'
