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"The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer. Day after month after year after story after book."
- Harlan Ellison
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| Distance Viewing | ||
| Look at any scene anywhere on Earth. |
| the Prefect of Giphantia presented me with a Mirrour. Thou canst only (says he) guess at things: but with thy rod and that glass, thou art going to hear and see both at once; nothing will escape thee; thou wilt be as present to whatever passes. From space to space (continued the Prefect) there are in the atmosphere portions of air which the spirits have so ranged, that they receive the rays reflected from the different parts of the earth, and remit them to this Mirrour: 57so that by inclining the glass different ways, the several parts of the earth’s surface will be visible on it. They will all appear one after the other, if the Mirrour is placed successively in all possible aspects. It is in thy power to view the habitations of every mortal. |
| Technovelgy from Giphantia,
by Charles-François Tiphaigne de La Roche. Published by Robert Horsfield in 1761 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the panoramic viewer from Childhood's End (1953) by Arthur C. Clarke.
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'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
