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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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| Electric Protection-Wires (Electrified Fence) | ||
| An electric fence. |
| Adjusting the electric protection-wires that were to paralyze any creature that attempted to come within the circle, and would arouse them by ringing a bell, he knocked the ashes from his pipe, rolled himself in a blanket, and was soon asleep beside his friends. |
| Technovelgy from A Journey In Other Worlds,
by John Jacob Astor IV. Published by D. Appleton and Co. in 1894 Additional resources -
|
Another excerpt:
As far as I know, the first instance of the idea of an electrified fence or railing occurs in Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Arranging a double line of electric wires in a circle about the mastodon and themselves, they sat down and did justice to the meal, with appetites that might have dismayed the waiting throng. Whenever a snake's head came in contact with one wire, while his tail touched the other, he gave a spasmodic leap and fell back dead. If he happened to fall across the wires, he immediately began to sizzle, a cloud of smoke arose, and lie was reduced to ashes.
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and Technology from A Journey In Other Worlds
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Tech news articles related to works by John Jacob Astor IV
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| Vipera Electric Skis From Frigid Dynamics |
| Pivotal Blackfly Electric Aircraft Lifts And Hovers |
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Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
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'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
