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"Why does a creative person create? It's a type of compulsion. I like to explore new ideas."
- Bart Kosko
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| Dirac Transmitter (also Tranceiver or Communicator) | ||
| A device that provides instantaneous communication anywhere in the galaxy. |
In Cities in Flight, the great cities of Earth have left; gone into orbit using the spindizzy, a device that counters gravity. They travel from star to star looking for work. They communicate using the Dirac transmitter.
At this point in the novel, a particular job is being discussed.
| ...one of the things they offer in payment is a new course which they say will take us into an iron-bearing star cluster, very recently settled, where there's likely to be plenty of work for us."
"So they say." "and I belive them," Lutz said sharply. "Everything they've said to me, they've also said on the open air, by Dirac transmitter. The cops have heard every word, not only locally, but wherever in the whole universe that there's a Dirac transceiver." |
| From Cities in Flight,
by James Blish. Published by Avon in 1957 Additional resources -
|
The first use of the Dirac communicator was in Blish's story Beep, published in 1954. He sometimes also calls it an "ultraphone" - this term dates from E.E. "Doc" Smith's 1934 novel Skylark of Valeron.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Cities in Flight
More Ideas
and Technology by James Blish
Tech news articles related to Cities in Flight
Tech news articles related to works by James Blish
Dirac Transmitter (also Tranceiver or Communicator)-related
news articles:
- Multi-Party Quantum Communication Possible
- SETI Workshop On Communicating Across The Cosmos
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'The old woman laid her wire-knitting aside and fixed them with the bug-eyed, opaque gape...'
'The scope was adjusted to generate... an image of the lower section of the book.'
'They should be Welton Fine-Grains, or they would be too bulky to ship...'
'He imagined thousands on thousands of faces peering into yards, into alleys...'
Rather than nudge them up, nudge them down.
