Saturday, 9 January 2021

Mobile Phones Or No Mobile Phones?

"Margin of Profit."

Van Rijn joins his four guests:

"Mjambo, who owned Jo-Boy Technical Services, was talking into his wristphone, but stopped when his host entered." (p. 79)

See:

Mobile Phones and its two links
 
We had concluded that there were no mobile phones in van Rijn's period and that they were developed some time during Flandry's, much later, period but now one of van Rijn's guests has one. Maybe the wristphone is a novelty that is used only for Jo-Boy internal communications? 

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

But it does show Anderson at least knew of the idea of having mobile, pocket, or wrist phones. I do wish he had shown them being used more often thru out the Technic stories.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Cellphones/mobiles change plotting for fiction quite considerably, btw. If a character can't be isolated, many traditional conventions go out the window.

So does the ability to look things up or get map guidance.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

But, cell/mobile phones might not be very practical on primitive planets. Or the wilder parts of planets like Diomedes. But, I agree, such things will seriously affect the plotting of stories.

Ad astra! Sean