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"Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket."
- George Orwell
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| Watercouch | ||
| A couch filled with water, rather than springs and cushions. |
This is a very simple extension of a now common idea; make use of waterbed technology in other rooms in your house.
| And there are times when I am so full of learning and being and doing that the moments zip past and the days are packed, and other times when I am floating in slack water beside a current, and the world is sliding speedily by. There was plenty to do. I didn't feel like doing it. Albert was bursting with news from Heechee Heaven and the Food Factory. I let him purge himself. But the synoptics plopped into my mind without raising a question or even a ripple; when he was through reporting about architectural deductions and interpretations of maunderings of the Dead Men I turned him off. It was intensely interesting, but for some reason I was not interested by it. I ordered Harriet to let my simulacrum deal with everything routine and tell everyone who was not urgent to call me another time. I stretched out on the three-meter watercouch looking out over the weird Brasilia skyline, and wished that it were that couch in the Food Factory, connected to someone I loved. |
| Technovelgy from Beyond the Blue Event Horizon,
by Frederik Pohl. Published by Ballantine in 1980 Additional resources -
|
Lots of people think that science fiction writer Robert Heinlein invented the waterbed; see the entry for hydraulic bed, from Stranger in a Strange Land for a more complete story.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Beyond the Blue Event Horizon
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Tech news articles related to Beyond the Blue Event Horizon
Tech news articles related to works by Frederik Pohl
| Sleep Pods At Daxing International Airport |
| Amazon Blimp Parent Drone Concept |
| Tortoise Mobile Smart Stores |
| Sony Pocket Air Conditioner Is Phil Dick's Idea! |
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'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain...'
'The observation vehicle was of that peculiar variety used in conveying a large number of people across rough terrain.'
'The real border was defended by... a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats.'
'I ... set my automatic astronomical instruments to searching for a habitable planet.'
'...haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?'
