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"I've got this beautiful panoramic three-dimensional painting of Mars based on Martian photos. It's 30 feet wide. You can pick out every pebble on the Martian landscape. And who'd have dreamed you could do that?"
- Arthur C. Clarke
 |
| 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." |
| 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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