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"We are all repositories for genetically-encoded information that we're all spreading back and forth amongst each other, all the time. We're just lousy with information."
- Neal Stephenson
 |
| Great Change | ||
| Humans are reduced to one foot in height, to take up less space and use fewer resources. |
Rolf Cameron is fooling around with a device - the mattercast:
Rolf stepped forward toward
the other machine - the receiver
-and for the moment was
squarely in the path of the transmission beam.
You can guess what happened. But you'll guess wrong. He winds up in the future.
The stubborn problem confronting Rolf was that of transmitting, via a radio beam, the
basic atoms of matter and reforming them into their original
unharmed state...
| "Before the Great Change,"
Jek went on, "all men were
giants. Too many men crowded
Earth. Even in the oceans they
lived on artificial islands. There
were many wars to capture land
already overcrowded. Men and
women starved. "So the scientist reduced the size of men. By radiations, glandular treatment or some other means. The records are not clear and many of the books are destroyed. But when men were a foot tall Earth was big enough for all of them." "I rather imagine," murmured Rolf making rough mental calculations. "The area would be increased by 62 - thirty-six times as many square miles as before."
 ('The Giant' by Basil Wells) "The Great Change destroyed us," droned on Jek. "Sons of miners remained miners. The sons of farmers remained farmers. The power to reason is gone. Our brains are too small." |
| Technovelgy from The Giant,
by Basil E. Wells. Published by Stirring Science Stories in 1942 Additional resources -
|
He meets several people who are big, like him:
"But that is ended," she
sighed. "All the men are dead.
We cannot escape to the stars
now. Mankind is doomed."
There is an earlier use of this idea. In The Devil Doll (1936), a scientist creates a formula to shrink people so they will use fewer resources. After he dies, a wronged businessman uses it for revenge!
"My name is Janet Larsen," -
she broke a long moment of silence. "We are the survivors of
a colony of scientists who hid
here almost two centuries ago
when the Great Change destroyed Earth's civilization.
Most of that time we haye busied
ourselves with the rebuilding and
repair of a wrecked spaceship
that crashed a few miles away.
('Devil Doll' (1936))
Compare to yardsticks from This Crowded Earth (1958) by Robert Bloch.
Thanks to SFFAudio for pointing out this story.
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