What’s your favourite sci fi tool or technology? Why?
Watch for spoilers as you tread here, of course.
Bonus points in my books if it’s a little off the beaten track (but lightsabers and spaceships are certainly welcome here) and if it’s relatively imaginable given current technologies.
I’ll start. In Void Star, one of the main characters is an independent orphan. He finds a laptop in a dump pre-programmed with an educational system that develops with him, starting with educational gameplay. It’s similar to the titular Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer in Neil Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, but I never found the latter very realistic.
A transporter, Star Trek style. I spend quite a bit of time every year travelling and a more eco friendly and time efficient mode of transport (compared to flying) would be most welcome!
The farcaster in Hyperion. I’d love to have a house with rooms on different worlds. A little neural farming seems like a reasonable price to pay for that.
Any time travel machine that goes backwards in time, in my view that is really fantasy but it is always entertaining. Unless posed as a question about Hitler of course
