Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Interociter!

     The interociter is a fine bit of science-fictional window-dressing, first encountered in the novel (and later film) This Island Earth* by Raymond F. Jones.   The first portion ("The Alien Machine") of both book and film is a genuine geek-fest: research scientist receives some oddball electronic components and an even stranger catalog, orders a kit from it and proceeds to build a strange machine.  Once the machine is assembled and turned on, a person appears in the inverted-triangular screen, congratulates the builder on his skill, and invites him to join an elite group of other scientists.†

     So I was looking up this widget the other day, double-checking my spelling, and found the Wikipedia article about it has a section called "Other Appearances."  The thing is a trope, after all, probably more widely known than the ansible, so it's no surprise it gets shout-outs here and there.

     But the very last entry in the section says this: "An Interocitor appears on the label of Café Bustelo. It depicts a woman on an interocitor video screen enjoying a cup of Bustelo coffee."

     H'mm.  It struck me as unlikely.  I like a good cup of Cuban style coffee from time to time and Café Bustelo is an excellent version, but does it really?

     Yes.  It does.  Really:
     Memo: do not hire graphic designers who spend excessive time at the movies.  "Welcome to Metaluna -- regular, or decaf?"
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* Quite successfully given the Mystery Science Fiction Theatre 3000 treatment several years ago.  The remainder of the film is not nearly as much of a geek-fest and the collection of nifty, mostly RCA gadgets that makes the first part such geek catnip does not continue.  On the other hand, what looks like a first draft of the bridge of the Starship Enterprise is used for a lot of it....

† This is what we all hoped would happen when we finished building a Heathkit back in the day.  Can't speak for anyone else but it certainly never happened to me.

8 comments:

  1. I can see a modern day remake of "This Island Earth" where the scientist, preoccupied with the demands of the Student's Intersectional Collective Against Oppressive Math and Science, passes the stuff off to a grad assistant, who's busy with his thesis and so passes it off to a sophomore, who puts everything together and goes and has the adventure and saves Earth from being taken over by the Metalunans.

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  2. Servo: INDUSTRY! MEN ADJUSTING THINGS!
    Crow: Build your own atom storage box!

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  3. I would have assumed that was a recruiting technique to staff the Hidden Frontier...

    Now that Heathkits are gone I guess app programming or Maker labs are the new recruiting grounds.

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  4. Who says Heathkit is gone? Did you not follow the link?

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  5. It's evergreen. "Hey, kid! Do you want to live forever, or do you want to defend the frontier against Xur and the Kodan Armada?"

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  6. Roberta, I followed the link. It is nice to see they are hanging on in the 21st century but hanging on is about it.

    I remember receivers, audiophile components, ham radios, Color TVs(!!) and an S100 bus computer (!!!).

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  7. Heathkit went entirely away; the new Heathkit is a reboot.

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  8. "Can't speak for anyone else but it certainly never happened to me."

    Nor I, but I did receive quite a tingle due to a little mismatch of wires when, with one hand grounded, the side of my neck touched the long wire antenna on my Heathkit GR-64 SW receiver. Good times.

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