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"At its best, SF is the medium in which our miserable certainty that tomorrow will be different from today in ways we can't predict, can be transmuted to a sense of excitement and anticipation, occasionally evolving into awe."
- John Brunner
 |
| Fresher | ||
| Short for "refreshing chamber,", it is the future of personal hygiene technology. |
See the entry for refreshing chamber, from the story Coventry, also by Robert Heinlein.
| Mary Sperling woke at her usual hour the next day. She got up quietly to keep from waking Lazarus, ducked into her 'fresher, showered and massaged, swallowed a grain of sleep surrogate to make up for the short night, followed it almost as quickly with all the breakfast she permitted her waistline, then punched for the calls she had not bothered to take the night before. |
| From Methuselah's Children,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1941 Additional resources -
|
Heinlein was rather attached to this idea; here's the large-scale version of this idea, from his 1948 novel Space Cadet:
Five minutes later Matt, naked as an egg, was stuffing his bag and clothes
into a sack marked with his serial number. As ordered, he filed through a door, clutching his orders and a remnant of dignity. He found himself in a gang refresher which showered him, scrubbed him, rinsed him, and blew
him dry again, assembly-line style. His instruction sheet was waterproof; he shook from it a few clinging drops.
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