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"The only real way to maintain privacy is to be uninteresting. It may be that privacy is a passing fad."
- Larry Niven
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| Shadow Square Wire | ||
| Very fine, very light, very strong wire. |
The Ringworld needed light and dark cycles to provide the inhabitants with day and night. So, shadow squares were placed in orbit closer to the sun; the squares were connected to each other with a very fine wire.
The makers of Ringworld never intended that the inhabitants would ever encounter shadow square wire. But there it was.
| "Don't touch it," Louis called... a girl had lost some fingers trying to pick up shadow square wire.
Close up, it still looked like black smoke... You could see the black thread, if your eye was within an inch of it; but then your eye would water and the thread would disappear. The thread was that close to being invisibly thin. |
| Technovelgy from Ringworld,
by Larry Niven. Published by Ballantine in 1970 Additional resources -
|
See also shadow squares.
Compare to ultron wire from Armageddon: 2419 A.D. (1928), by Philip Frances Nowlan.
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'... the expressionless face before me was therefore that of the golem-wrestler, Rolem, a creature that could be set for five times the strength of a human being.'
'Waldo put his arms into the primary pair before him; all three pairs, including the secondary pair mounted before the machine, came to life.'
'... the glittering little rocket bolted to the black iron behind him.'
'The slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector...'
'The operation that had transformed half his body... had located the control switchboard in his teeth.'
