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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Probability Time Wave Tube | ||
| A device that allows the user to see every possible event. |
True genius is rare - but maybe it's better to have a great many minor tinkerers, than just one genius.
| "They had the tube then. They called it the PTW tube - Probability Time Wave. They'd been trying to make a television set that would see through walls..." "Their PTW tube caught and displayed every possibility that was ever to exist. And somewhere in that vast sweep of probability, every possible thing existed. Somewhere, the wildest dream of the wildest optimist was, and became fact." |
| Technovelgy from Elimination,
by John W. Campbell. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1936 Additional resources -
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The short story Elimination appears in the collection Who Goes There, published in 1948. These stories were published under the pseudonym Don A. Stuart.
See also the infinite improbability drive from Douglas Adams' 1979 novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe.
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from Elimination
More Ideas
and Technology by John W. Campbell
Tech news articles related to Elimination
Tech news articles related to works by John W. Campbell
Probability Time Wave Tube-related
news articles:
- LEXID Sees Through Walls To Next Apartment
- See People Through Walls
| Vipera Electric Skis From Frigid Dynamics |
| Pivotal Blackfly Electric Aircraft Lifts And Hovers |
| Tiny Flying Robot Weighs Just One Gram |
| Some Ringworld Configurations Are Stable |
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Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
'The crawling... object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
'Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses...'
'You couldn't have the capstone without the pyramid to hold it up.'
'the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers...'
I'm hoping that this procedure becomes a normal part of medical practice!
'... nothing was perfected until M. Pantalon announced the completion of his automatic valet.'
'...its streets were of remarkable width, with few or no buildings so high as mosques, churches, State-offices, or palaces in Tellurian cities.'
