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"Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today -- but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all."
- Isaac Asimov
 |
What is the secret behind a star unique in all the known cosmos?
| "Please go on, sir," Darby invited quickly, with a spark of pity for the old man. "I haven't heard the
full story of Old Unfaithful. Besides, I have time to kill while Brains wrestles with his homework."
Darby grinned and patted his machine. He was the technician handling the electronic brain that digested all the observatory's cosmic equations. "Brains" clacked and hissed beside him, working madly at the moment on a complex problem of red shifts. While his ingenious mechanical partner labored, Darby was at leisure.
 (Artwork showing Brains from The Cosmic Blinker) "Brains over there — the electronic brain. He solves every other problem in galactic astronomy, many of them staggering to the human mind. We just feed him the data and he does the rest. Brains can crack the code, I'm sure. Translating the language will be tougher, but he'll do it." Brains was not a giant computer. It was no more than ten feet wide. But it was packed with mental might. Countless tiny transistors and incredible mazes of synaptic relays and spongy centers of metallic cells added up to a thousand human minds. And Brains had not yet met a celestial riddle that it could not solve within twenty-four hours. |
| Technovelgy from The Cosmic Blinker,
by Eando Binder. Published by Science Fiction Plus in 1953 Additional resources -
|
A relatively early example of a computer that can solve specific, complex problems that would challenge even human experts.
Compare to Multivac from Franchise (1955) by Isaac Asimov and the Central Computer from The City and the Stars (1956) by Arthur C. Clarke.
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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...'
