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"[Science fiction] is the one literary medium left in which we have a free hand. We can do any damn thing we please."
- Alfred Bester
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| Metal Lark | ||
| A device that adjusts the vocal chords and helps the user to be the best singer possible. |
Just the advertising sounds good!
"In your home twenty-four hours a day,” it began, “the finest vocal teacher in the world!" Then there was a lot of stuff about precision engineering in the Metal Lark’s electronic brain and the lyric wonder of the voice you can have and something about the revolutionary cortical synthesis of neutrons and positrons in a vital imbalance.
The prospectus ended with the words "What do you mean— you can’t sing? All you mean is — you’ve never owned a Metal Lark!’’
Oona got the prospectus of the Metal Lark Company (a division of Interstellar Electronics) out of her hand case and carefully studied it.
| "Do you like it, honey?" Jick asked with a hint of anxiety. "It's a Metal Lark. 1 sort of got the idea from something you said that you might like to have one.”
Oona found her tongue. "It’s just exactly what 1 wanted, Jick." she said warmly. “I was crazy to have one. But I'm a little surprised: I didn’t think it would be this big.”
 ('The Metal Lark' by Margaret St. Clair) Somehow, she'd had the idea that it would be about the size of a metronome; the Metal Lark was shaped like a metronome, all right, but it was almost a meter and a half tall and its whole surface was covered with glassy protuberances. It looked as efficient as could be. “It has to be big, honey, to hold all the machinery." Jick explained. "It's the super de luxe model, the best they make. I hope you enjoy it.” |
| Technovelgy from The Metal Lark,
by Margaret St. Clair. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1948 Additional resources -
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'...each of them is a neural mapping of the mind of a Tibetan monk who actually lived.'
'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain, through the mediation of the electronic brain in the leg.'
'... every veephone on the continent would display, over and over, two propositions.'
'Completely silent, accurate up to about twenty meters. No recoil...'
'He wore spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.'
