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"The world is really so surreal these days that it's necessary for us to blunt it somehow in order to stay sane. The artist functions to short-circuit the buffering mechanism, so that people can occasionally perceive the weirdness of things as they are."
- William Gibson
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| Artificial Transparent Element | ||
| A substance as strong as metal that you can see through. |
| Windows of an artificial transparent element, scarcely less strong than the metal of the hull, enabled the voyagers to look around them. |
| Technovelgy from Last and First Men,
by Olaf Stapledon. Published by Not known in 1930 Additional resources -
|
This is an obvious precursor to the idea with which all Star Trek fans are familiar, that of "transparent aluminum".
Also, it turns out that the helio-beryllium from Out Around Rigel, a 1931 story by Robert H. Wilson, also has a transparent variant.
Compare to glassite from Brigands of the Moon (1930) by Ray Cummings,
neo-crystal from Master of the Asteroid (1932) by Clark Ashton Smith,
transparent car roof from Sinister Barrier (1939) by Eric Frank Russell,
plani glass from Crystalized Thought (1937) by Nat Schachner,
thermalite from Planet of Eternal Night (1939) by John W. Campbell and slow glass from Light of Other Days (1968) by Bob Shaw.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Last and First Men
More Ideas
and Technology by Olaf Stapledon
Tech news articles related to Last and First Men
Tech news articles related to works by Olaf Stapledon
Artificial Transparent Element-related
news articles:
- Transparent Aluminum Vs. .50-Cal Bullets
- New Glass Tough As Steel
| MXenes - Atomic-Thin Metal Sheets Now Easier To Make |
| Do We Still Need Orbiting Factories? |
| MIT Self-Assembling Reprogrammable Materials |
| Tiny Mining - Extract Precious Industrial Minerals From Your Own Body |
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'Then they press one of these here thirteen buttons...'
'You're a stable, rock-bottom mining robot, except that you're equipped to handle six subsidiaries in direct coordination...'
'The crawling, exploring object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
'It radiates outward in a cone which, by the time it has reached our section of space, is many lightyears across.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock.'
'... with a weird simulation of life, the ten forked ends of each arm commenced a rattling pressing of the buttons.'
'Each of the four areas is enclosed by a sonic wall...'
