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"I received a nice letter the other day from the Dalai Lama. He had read 'The Nine Billion Names of God'. It is about a computer at a Tibetan monastery."
- Arthur C. Clarke
 |
| Time Scoop | ||
| Retrieved objects from other points in time. |
| There, beyond the steel door, was the time scoop. He recognized it at once. The mirror. The long metal rods, ending in claws. Like Berkowski's theoretical model - only this was real.
 (Time Scoop from 'Paycheck' by Philip K. Dick) |
| Technovelgy from Paycheck,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Imagination in 1953 Additional resources -
|
Here's a description of what happens when it is used:
From the dark circle a claw appeared, a metal claw, joined to a shimmering rod. The claw dropped, swinging in a wide arc. The claw swept the paper from Kelly's fingers. It hesitated for a second. Then it drew itself up again, disappearing with the paper, into the circle of black. Then, silently, the claw and the rod and the circle blanked out. There was nothing. Nothing at all.
Perhaps the earliest use of this general idea can be found in a 1939 story by Edmond Hamilton published in Startling Stories:
In the space above them something moved. A dark space formed, A circle. The space stirred. Kelly and Rethrick stared up, frozen.
('The Space Visitors' by Edmond Hamilton)
Compare to the time dredge from Time Dredge (1942) by Robert Arthur.
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'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
'Henry... assumed the curious absent look of a robot talking on the TBR circuits.'
'The king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions...'
