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"...a market economy is essentially a genetic algorithm for solving resource allocation problems..."
- Charles Stross

Sleeping Plates  
  A pair of plates that nullify gravity for the being(s) sleeping between them. Is null gravity the answer to your sleep problems?  

You want the most comfortable sleeping experience known to man? You want to eliminate bed sores forever? Try sleeping plates.

My face and hands were flaming red, with blisters rising, and I ached as though I'd been beaten. Rest and tender loving care, that's what I wanted.

I was floating between a pair of sleeping plates, hideously uncomfortable, when the nurse came to announce a visitor. I knew who it was from her peculiar expression. "What can get through a General Products hull?" I asked it.

Technovelgy from Neutron Star, by Larry Niven.
Published by Worls of If in 1966
Additional resources -

Here's a clue to some additional features; this quote is from his 1970 novel Ringworld:

"Sleeproom nodes merge," he said, and something happened to the sleeper field. The two regions of stable equilibrium, the anomalies which kept Louis and Teela from falling out of the field, moved together and merged into one. Louis and Teela followed, sliding "downhill" until they bumped and clung.

"I really was sleepy, Louis. But never mind..."

There is apparently some science (or good pseudo-science) about the sleep position you most often adopt. The free-fall position, defined as lying on your front with your hands around the pillow and head turned to one side, is adopted by about 7% of those studied. In Sleep Position Gives Personality Clue, Professor Chris Idzikowski, director of the Sleep Assessment and Advisory Service, assigns these characteristics:
    "Often gregarious and brash people, but can be nervy and thin-skinned underneath, and don't like criticism, or extreme situations."
See the gravity neutralizing disks from a 1937 Edmund Hamilton story for an early (the earliest?) reference to this idea.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Neutron Star
  More Ideas and Technology by Larry Niven
  Tech news articles related to Neutron Star
  Tech news articles related to works by Larry Niven

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