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"You have to budget the number of fuzzy rules you use to control a system. It turns out, you can state the optimality principle in three words: 'patch the bumps.'"
- Bart Kosko
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| Gauzy | ||
| A feather-light tent, made of a fabric just one molecule thick. |
Hasan is an exemplary assassin. Some people have a talent for music - they can pick up an instrument and play it within a few hours. Others have a talent for weapons.
| Hasan always pitched a Gauzy - a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough. He never slept in it, though. He just used it to stash his junk.
I seated myself on a log before the fire and Hasan ducked inside his Gauzy. He emerged a moment later with his pipe and a block of hardened, resinous-looking stuff, which he proceeded to scale and grind. He mixed it with a bit of burley and then filled the pipe. After he got it going with a stick from the fire, he sat smoking it beside me. "I do not want to kill you, Karagee," he said. |
| Technovelgy from This Immortal,
by Roger Zelazny. Published by Ace Science Fiction in 1965 Additional resources -
|
Up to the 1960's, tents were mostly made from canvas or similar materials, and used steel supports. A tent big enough for four people was not something you wanted to carry around if you could avoid it. However, tents made of more modern materials, like nylon, and the supports were made from aluminum. The Gauzy takes this process a step further, with the lightest possible material used - just one molecule thick.
For another example of an extremely thin material, see the entry for light sail.
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and Technology from This Immortal
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and Technology by Roger Zelazny
Tech news articles related to This Immortal
Tech news articles related to works by Roger Zelazny
Gauzy-related
news articles:
- Graphene - Nanofabric One Atom Thick
- New Materials One Atom Thick Extracted With Micromechanical Cleavage
- Graphene Reveals Fine Structure Constant
- Graphene Is Also Super Strong
- New Material Is One Molecule Thick
- Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick
| AI-THu Shapeshifting Transformer Home |
| With Mycotecture, We'll Just Grow The Space Habitats We Need |
| Vast Apartment Living Will Get Even More Vast |
| LiquidView Ersatz Windows, ala Philip K. Dick |
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'...it was all composed of tiny, identical cubes, carefully laid to form a tilelike surface.'
'He carried on his person a triggering mechanism sensitive to his heartbeat.'
'...Anything was possible in my imaginary environment.'
'Somewhere in space, a chrome and blue automobile raced the green light of Earth.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair...'
'We had discovered that metal was relatively impervious to the telepathic effect.'
'Detailed plans for the construction of the Gundstetter-Halone warp drive were flowing.'
