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"The SF approach: an awareness that things could have been different, that this is one of many possible worlds, that if you came to this world from some other planet, this would be a science fiction world."
- Neal Stephenson
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| Death-Rattle | ||
| A device that sends a signal upon brain death of the user. |
This is an early reference to the idea of a tag or medallion that performs a continuous medical monitoring function, and then communicates that information wirelessly to another location.
| Heimie and died, and his death - the cessation of his neural pattern - had triggered off an automatic squawk. A rattle didn’t particularly protect its owner, but its existence ensured (or usually ensured) detection of the murderer. Why had it failed Heimie?
…Tirol hadn’t known about Heimie’s death rattle; Heimie had been wise enough to do the installation privately. |
| Technovelgy from The Unreconstructed M,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Science Fiction Stories in 1957 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the Death-Rattle file from Dick's 1965 novel The Zap Gun and to the Taprisiot monitor bead from Frank Herbert's 1977 novel The Dosadi Experiment.
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Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
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'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...'
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'
'The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe- like independence.'
