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"My feeling is that the chance of our surviving into the twenty-first century as working civilization is less than fifty percent but greater than zero."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Artificially Pulsating Star | ||
| A star that has been modified to pulsate with a message to the entire universe. |
| Brains flashed out his lighted message across the
moving tape. The electronic genius had done its job, not only cracking the code of the pulsating star, but
ferreting out the language behind it, and then translating those words into our language.
Darby's face held pride. And perhaps the hum of the machine, too, was triumphant at its nameless feat. And at last the answer was there, before their eyes, the message from M-81. "Warning to all galaxies. Danger awaits to strike you, as it has struck us. But before we were wiped out, we sent this message. "We caused one star to fluctuate like a variable, by means of subatomic force-fields that serve as curtains around the star. We installed the controlling unit on a planet of that star, set to continue flashing its signals long after we were gone. "A synchronized tape message automatically controls the unit, making the star flash bright and dim according to a universal code built from pure mathematical fundamentals. Intelligent beings with astronomical science would note the variable star that obeyed no known laws, and soon realize that it conveyed a warning. " |
| Technovelgy from The Cosmic Blinker,
by Eando Binder. Published by Science Fiction Plus in 1953 Additional resources -
|
Compare with the slightly earlier the space beacon from Troubled Star (1952) by George O. Smith and the hyperspace beacon from The Repairman (1959) by Harry Harrison.
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'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
'Briquet’s head seemed to think that to find and attach a new body to her head was as easy as to fit and sew a new dress.'
'...copy was turned out in a charming and entirely feminine handwriting.'
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'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain...'
