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"When you're making a revolution in cyberspace, things look rather different from the way the 1980s cyberpunks wrote it."
- Charles Stross
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| Life Detector Shield | ||
| An electronic field that is intended to shield living tissue from a Life Detector. |
In this short story, there are sensors that will detect the presence of living beings. And as is always the case in the history of warfare, there is also a counter-weapon.
| Hulser was back in the chill present, a deadly suspicion gnawing at him: The enemy has a new type of shield, not as good as ours. It merely reduces image size!
...another corner of his mind began to think about the shields, the complex flicker-lattice that made human flesh transparent... |
| Technovelgy from Cease Fire,
by Frank Herbert. Published by Conde Nast in 1958 Additional resources -
|
In the real world, there are various ways to detect the presence of living beings (most of them don't differentiate that well between animals and people). For example, there are sensors that will detect the presence of carbon dioxide, which we all give off when breathing. And there are infrared sensors, which detect our body heat.
Compare to the life-shield blanket from Heretics of Dune (1984) by Frank Herbert, the
radiant shield from The Houses of Iszm (1954) by Jack Vance, the
protective shield from Triplanetary (1934) by 'Doc' Smith and the
personal force-shield from Foundation (1951) by Isaac Asimov and the geofractor shield from One Against the Legion (1939) by Jack Williamson.
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'If the biological robots were not living creatures, they were certainly very good imitations.'
"Everybody and his dog, it seemed, wanted to live out in the country; transportation and communication were no longer isolating factors."
'... the new typewriter that could be talked to, and which transposed the spoken sound into typed words.'
'... underneath they consisted of networks of cooling tubes against the skin.'
'My cars talk to one another. I have no doubt about it...'
'... the imprint of her image on the telephoto cell.'
