Monday 25 August 2014

The Intelligence Revolution

Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977).

A rabbit escapes from a trap.
An owl hoots in fear and bewilderment.
An agricultural worker previously unable to drive a car contemplates the stellar universe.
A ten year old boy leaves his model plane unfinished and starts to invent differential calculus.
Peter Corinth wakes up with a possible solution to his problem of how to build a phase analyzer for intermolecular resonance bonds in crystal structure.
Sheila Corinth becomes engrossed in a serious novel instead of reading a detective story, shopping or eating lunch.
Felix Mandelbaum, union organizer, wakes up with an idea for a reorganization plan that will halve the paper work and outlines a chart before leaving for work.
A dog in a basement opens a deep freeze, drags out meat and eats it when it has thawed.
A lift attendant decides to start a night course.
Corinth's colleague Grunewald has a parallel idea for a circuit that might work.
The usually quiet Johansson contributes eagerly as the three men draft their plans.
Everyone is jumpy.
Young Roberts comes up with even wilder ideas than usual.
Nat Lewis, studying neurones, finds that they are reacting faster than normally and with intenser signals...

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