“There were four superchimps aboard Endeavour, though strictly speaking the name was inaccurate, because the ship’s non-human crew was not based on chimpanzee stock. In zero gravity, a prehensile tail is an enormous advantage, and all attempts to supply these to humans had turned into embarrassing failures. After equally unsatisfactory results with the great apes, […]
Author: losophyp
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Surveillance Stickers
Surveillance stickers are a relatively common item in the THS-era. They are used by various naturalists, scientists, engineers, hobbyists, and bird-watchers, to name a few. The same technology also has less innocent applications. A typical surveillance sticker is a flat, flexible camera. A very commonly encountered model takes the form of an orange 3 centimetre […]
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Let The Dice Decide!
I would like to think I have a creative subconscious, Other people may just be of the opinion that I have really weird dreams. Last night I was dreaming. The dream's protagonist (myself? hard to say in my dreams) was playing some large-scale wargame with models (perhaps toy soldiers too, cannot recall). Unlike the games […]
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Varmints of Va-nah
A complaint often levelled at Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) is that the worlds he describes are ecologically unbalanced. His heroes often encounter large predators, but animals which are their more usual diet are seldom mentioned. I feel this criticism is a little unfair. ERB's narrators are usually busy rescuing princesses, so have greater concerns than […]
“The multinationals' intelligence needs . . . are not much different from those of the United States, France or any other country. . . .Indeed, any discussion of the intelligence battles among the CIA, KGB, and their satellite agencies will be incomplete if it doesn't describe the increasingly important roles played by the apparats of […]
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Blasters: Make Them Brutal
One of the TV channels has been showing re-runs of “Blake’s Seven”. This was a memorable series, often for the wrong reasons! In the episode “Seek-Locate-Destroy”, the character Travis has a weapon taken from him. For no apparent reason, Travis is treatening his prisoner with a tiny pistol rather than any of the many other […]
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Physical Changes in Future Humans
Recently I have read a number of stories that feature humans in or from the far future. How might such “Future Humans” differ from modern humans? Physical changes are likely to be the product of human engineering and technology rather than natural selection and evolution. Better Brains Future Human is often depicted with an enlarged […]
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Low Cost Accommodations in THS
“He and Wynne were living at a tube rack in Battersea. She could have afforded better; he insisted that they live within his means. There were about two hundred plastic sleep tubes stacked in what had once been a warehouse. Each was three meters long; the singles were a meter and a half in diameter, […]
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Personal ID Numbers in Sci-Fi
When he had filled out all the homesteading forms he had of course put down his phone number, since this was as much a part of him as was his name. Everyone was given a phone number at birth, and it was his for life. With the computer-controlled circuits anyone, anywhere on a planet, could […]
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Bionics and Bioroids
Version 2.5 I grew-up watching “Six Million Dollar Man”, and bionics were also a staple of early cyberpunk. In common usage, “bionics” refers to fitting humans or animals with mechanical/robotic parts. Such “old school” bionics are seldom encountered in Transhuman Space (THS), their role mainly being served by biomods. It can, of course, be argued […]