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"What television does is rent us friends and relatives who are quite satisfactory. This is quite something, to rent artificial friends and relatives right inside the house."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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| Golden Lights | ||
| Another unusual use of the suspensor field; lights are suspended in it. |
Another aspect of the Baron Harkonnen's multimedia center and conference room (no windows for better security) was an area artfully lighted using just the bulbs themselves suspended in air.
| Light glowed in the room from golden balls hanging in mobile suspensor fields. |
| Technovelgy from Dune,
by Frank Herbert. Published by Putnam in 1965 Additional resources -
|
Another interesting detail is the idea that the suspensor fields are mobile, that is, adjustable. The lights could be moved, not just turned or brightened and dimmed.
Inevitably, some elements of any science fiction writer's work reflect the time in which they were written. This technovelgy item reminds me very strongly of track lighting, which was introduced in the early 1960's.
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'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...'
