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"This category [science fiction] excludes rocket ships that make U-turns, serpent men of Neptune that lust after human maidens, and stories by authors who flunked their Boy Scout merit badge tests in descriptive astronomy."
- Robert Heinlein
 |
| Genoprinter | ||
| A device that does a 'live capture' of a biometric skin sample. |
| The gravity trains departed from the level just below Center. Lilo bought two tickets, nervously sticking her hand into the slot of the genoprinter before doing so. It had worked well enough on Mars.
... She felt the scrape of the sampler across her palm, the machine whirred, and somewhere in the banks of the Pluto Central Computer an entry was made: JOVIAN-342 (ID-L-502-KC-98) BOARDED FLORIDA-BARROW SHUTTLE 0349 HRS. 4/8/71. The security check was automatic, and it came up green. |
| From The Ophiuchi Hotline,
by John Varley. Published by Quantum Science Fiction in 1977 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the automated DNA typing from the 1997 film Gattaca and the palm lock from Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune.
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'... with large padded feet, who were apparently polishing their way the whole length of Rama's six artificial suns.'
'Anything larger than a BB shot it picked up and placed in a tray on its upper surface...'
'the human seats took up two-thirds of the room in each'
'the curious absent look of a robot talking on the TBR circuits...'
'Over her lacerated right shoulder he sprayed art-derm...'
Now, that was a Pontiac Trans Am with some real style.
'There is a built-in microphone that hears everything you say, and an electric brain that selects a suitable answer.'
