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"[Science fiction is] nightmares and visions, always outlined by the barely possible."
- Gregory Benford
 |
| Psychic Probe | ||
| A device capable of discerning truthful information in a living human brain. |
| "...I might have made more progress with my prisoner were my Psychic Probe in proper order."
The secretary's eyebrows lifted. "You have a Probe?" "An old one. A superannuated one which fails me the one time I needed it. I set it up during the prisoner's sleep, and received nothing. So much for the Probe. I have tried it on my own men and the reaction is quite proper, but again there is not one among my staff of tech-men who can tell me why it fails upon the prisoner. Ducem Barr, who is a theoretician of parts, though no mechanic, says the psychic structure of the prisoner may be unaffected by the Probe since from childhood he has been subjected to alien environments and neural stimuli. |
| From Foundation and Empire,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Doubleday in 1952 Additional resources -
|
I think that this device is different from a machine that determines whether spoken statements are true or false.
Compare to the veridicator from H. Beam Piper's 1962 novel Little Fuzzy and the truth meter from Robert Heinlein's 1954 novel The Star Beast.
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Convincing video shows progress (and limitations).
'The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.'
'Against Death doth no simple grow.'
'His legs relaxed with a rattle as he cut off all power below his waist... and ran his eye down the Help Wanted - Robot column...'
'It can be mass-produced only in the orbiting factories.'
'He realized that it was not quite a clear lens.'
'Noiselessly, on rubber-tired wheels, they journeyed down the long aisles...'
'Here is the chronoscope... Scansion depends upon a special curved field...'
'It's illegal to hold back information during a psyche test.'
