Plus, the very first replicator won’t be perfect. We’ll have (in fact, we have right now) “replicators” that don’t have sufficient fidelity and/or versatility to make themselves long before we’ll have ones that will. As time goes on, replicators will become able to make more and more things… but also become more difficult to make. Hopefully, the latter happens slower than the former, so it’ll eventually be able to catch up, but it’ll be a gradual process.
Whereupon the value of physical objects will shift first to elements and eventually to exotic matter like strange quark nuggets.
But a replicator that makes mistakes can evolve…
Which might be bad for us…
…giving us Zibarro, the Bizarro-Bizarro Superman.
His pizza isn’t much good, either.
Here’s one for you - not a story but an episode in a comic book, and not so much science fiction as horror. Still, I may get lucky and you’ve run across this one.
I think it’s most likely that it was a mid-1970s ‘Witching Hour’, or maybe a ‘Twilight Zone’. It involved a high class Chinese person who was obnoxious to those he considered beneath him. He did something that was too much for, well, I’m not sure whom - a mage, a witch, a wizard, the gods, the fates… He was cursed to sweep until the last bristle fell from his broom. What he wasn’t told was - dun dun duh duh DAH - each bristle of the broom was one year of his life, and by the time he was done, he was too old to enjoy his freedom from the curse, and died that day.
Any ideas what it was and what it was called?
Hm. Sounds like it’s inspired by the story of the last Emperor of China, who did spend some time as a street sweeper after a long and complicated series of events
Puyi came to Beijing on 9 December 1959 with special permission from Mao and lived for the next six months in an ordinary Beijing residence with his sister before being transferred to a government-sponsored hotel. He had the job of sweeping the streets, and got lost on his first day of work, which led him to tell astonished passers-by: “I’m Puyi, the last Emperor of the Qing dynasty. I’m staying with relatives and can’t find my way home”.[213] One of Puyi’s first acts upon returning to Beijing was to visit the Forbidden City as a tourist; he pointed out to other tourists that many of the exhibits were the things he had used in his youth. He voiced his support for the Communists and worked as a gardener at the Beijing Botanical Gardens. The role brought Puyi a degree of happiness he had never known as an emperor, though he was notably clumsy.
I’m looking for a story in Analog magazine in the 1970s, where a campus supercomputer / intelligent computer was answering technical questions with poetry, which confused people. It turned out a librarian was feeding the computer all the poetry books at night.
I remember a line from the computer in response to an architectural design with a phrase about building castles on the sand.
Any ideas? Thanks!!
Answer Affirmative or Negative by Barbara Paul - available here if you have an account
That was it! You are great!! It’s from 1973 - 51 years ago.
My foggy memory recalls a science fiction story, or perhaps essay, proposing the use of nuclear waste as coinage. Could be counted remotely, with a Geiger counter. Would tend to discourage the hoarding of coins. There were some other benefits touted - I need to track this down!
A Larry Niven essay “Yet Another Modest Proposal” link: https://www.larryniven.net/?q=yet-another-modest-proposal-the-roentgen-standard
Essay must predate the widespread use of credit and debit cards.
Already ninja’d. Ah well
I can’t remember if this was a Warhammer 40k novel detail, but soldiers in the future having automatic defibrillators built into their armored suits to automatically resuscitate themselves.
There’s a Michael Kube-McDowell story about a wearable device that will revive you from a heart attack and inflate to protect you from injury. “Life Bomb” was also made into an episode of “Tales from the Darkside” Lifebomb | DarksideTales Wiki | Fandom
Besides the Niven essay, you might also be recalling Self-Limiting by Robert L. Forward, a story speculated to be inspired by it. It begins and ends with the line “There are no millionaires on Xanax”, and is set on a planet where money comes in the form of heavy, warm metal coins that are stored in a “money pit” that can contain a hundred thosuand coins. One of them gets the idea to dig his pit bigger and start stealing…
He entered his dwelling, and leaning over the money pit, he gloated as he dropped the bag of coins into the hole that was waiting for it. Queed could hardly wait until it was night-time and he could take out all the coins and count them. He was now certainly a millionaire!
As the heavy bag of silvery-grey coins made of pure plutonium 239 dropped into the waiting hole, the money pit went critical and exploded . . .
There are no millionaires on Xanax.
Which is silly of course because people would have to know what the only thing that counted as money was made out of.
I just keep thinking “I bet there are a lot of millionaires on Xanax.”