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"...the elements of cyberpunk have dissolved into the whole SF genre, so it’s hard to find anyone writing who doesn’t owe serious debts to Gibson and his crew."
- Richard Morgan
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| Minimic Film | ||
| Very fine message medium. |
For an era in which microfilm was the defining standard of very tiny media for use by spies, shigawire of one-micron diameter is even better for espionage.
| Hawat shrugged. "It's a scrap of a note. We took it from a Harkonnen courier. The note was intended for an agent named Pardee. We've good reason to believe Pardee was top man in the Harkonnen underground here. The note--it's a thing that could have great consequence or no consequence. It's susceptible to various interpretations." "What's the delicate content of this note?" "Scrap of a note, my Lord. Incomplete. It was on minimic film with the usual destruction capsule attached. We stopped the acid action just short of full erasure, leaving only a fragment. The fragment, however, is extremely suggestive." |
| Technovelgy from Dune,
by Frank Herbert. Published by Putnam in 1965 Additional resources -
|
Note also the clever use of the root word for "minimum" - the author is able to invent a new word that yet seems familiar and well-defined. The word "minim" is also used in the novel to denote the smallest usable amount of something.
See also the definition of shigawire, from the same book.
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'He was in a high-ceilinged windowless cell with walls of glittering white porcelain.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors...'
'The robant and the tiny old woman entered the control room slowly...'
'Guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs... What are the odds?'
'It is as you thought when you constructed the time crystal, my master Vaylan.'
'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
