| "The Gift of Gab" | |
|---|---|
| Short story by Jack Vance | |
 | |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Publication | |
| Publisher | Astounding |
| Publication date | September 1955 |
"The Gift of Gab" is an early science fiction short story by American author Jack Vance, first published in 1955. It is a mystery story, and the main theme is the nature of intelligence.
Mineral prospectors on another planet examine their environment more closely when crew members start to disappear. There seems to be no intelligent life on the planet, which is predominantly covered by shallow seas, teeming with marine life. But one of the scientists who is studying the marine species in aquariums begins to suspect that the decapods, a creature similar to a squid or nautilus with ten tentacles and eyes, may be smarter than an ordinary mollusc. He attempts to teach a semaphore-like code, using the decapods's tentacles like hands of a clock to represent letters than can spell out English. Meanwhile, the prospectors discover rich mineral deposits on the floor of the sea that can be easily mined, but at the cost of destroying the species. The biologist argues that intelligent life cannot be lightly wiped out, while the prospectors argue there is no intelligence and plot to kill the nautilus. At the climax, a prospector secretly poisons the decapod with acid, but the biologist rescues it just in time as the decapod signals "H-O-T-W-A-T-E-R" and then names the prospector.
A cephalopod is any member of the molluscan class Cephalopoda such as a squid, octopus, cuttlefish, or nautilus. These exclusively marine animals are characterized by bilateral body symmetry, a prominent head, and a set of arms or tentacles modified from the primitive molluscan foot. Fishers sometimes call cephalopods "inkfish", referring to their common ability to squirt ink. The study of cephalopods is a branch of malacology known as teuthology.
The nautilus is an ancient pelagic marine mollusc of the cephalopod family Nautilidae. The nautilus is the sole extant family of the superfamily Nautilaceae and the suborder Nautilina.
The Berserker series is a series of space opera science fiction short stories and novels by Fred Saberhagen, in which robotic self-replicating machines strive to destroy all life.
A humanoid is a non-human entity with human form or characteristics. By the 20th century, the term came to describe fossils which were morphologically similar, but not identical, to those of the human skeleton.
Spirula spirula is a species of deep-water squid-like cephalopod mollusk. It is the only extant member of the genus Spirula, the family Spirulidae, and the order Spirulida. Because of the shape of its internal shell, it is commonly known as the ram's horn squid or the little post horn squid. Because the live animal has a light-emitting organ, it is also sometimes known as the tail-light squid.
The concept of self-replicating spacecraft, as envisioned by mathematician John von Neumann, has been described by futurists and has been discussed across a wide breadth of hard science fiction novels and stories. Self-replicating probes are sometimes referred to as von Neumann probes. Self-replicating spacecraft would in some ways either mimic or echo the features of living organisms or viruses.
The Songs of Distant Earth is a 1986 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, based upon his 1958 short story of the same title. Of all of his novels, Clarke stated that this was his favourite. Prior to the publishing of the novel, Clarke also wrote a short step outline with the same title, published in Omni magazine and anthologised in The Sentinel in 1983.
The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950) is a science fiction novel by Canadian-American writer A. E. van Vogt. An example of space opera subgenre, the novel is a "fix-up" compilation of four previously published stories:
The argonauts are a group of pelagic octopuses. They are also called paper nautili, referring to the paper-thin eggcase that females secrete; however, as octopuses, they are only distant relatives of true nautili. Their structure lacks the gas-filled chambers present in chambered nautilus shells and is not a true cephalopod shell, but rather an evolutionary innovation unique to the genus. It is used as a brood chamber, and to trap surface air to maintain buoyancy. It was once speculated that argonauts did not manufacture their eggcases but utilized shells abandoned by other organisms, in the manner of hermit crabs. Experiments by pioneering marine biologist Jeanne Villepreux-Power in the early 19th century disproved this hypothesis, as Villepreux-Power successfully reared argonaut young and observed their shells' development.
"In the Walls of Eryx" is a short story by American writers H. P. Lovecraft and Kenneth J. Sterling, written in January 1936 and first published in Weird Tales magazine in October 1939. It is a science fiction story involving space exploration in the near future.
Cephalopod intelligence is a measure of the cognitive ability of the cephalopod class of molluscs.
Tweel is a fictional extraterrestrial from the planet Mars, featured in two short stories by Stanley G. Weinbaum. The alien was featured in A Martian Odyssey, first published in 1934, and Valley of Dreams four months later. Weinbaum died of lung cancer soon after, and a third installment in the series never saw fruition. Tweel remains one of the most recognised aliens in early science fiction, and is said to be an inspiration for aliens in the works of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.
The Dry Salvages is a futuristic science fiction story of novella length by American writer Caitlín R. Kiernan, published in 2004 as a stand-alone hardback volume by Subterranean Press. The story consists of two parallel narratives, one set in the novella's present-day and the other in the novel's past. Told as a first-person narrative, the story is being written down with three antique ballpoint pens by Audrey Cather, an exopaleontologist and the lone survivor of an ill-fated mission to an extrasolar planet, Cecrops, a gas giant orbiting the low-mass red dwarf star Gliese 876. The Montelius mission included two other human astronauts, Peter Connor and Joakim Hamilton, and one parahuman astronaut, Umachandra Murdin, along with a number of androids. Its object was to investigate evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization which had long ago mined Piros, a moon of Cecrops. A blend of dystopian science fiction, Lovecraftian horror, and cyberpunk, along with elements of space opera, the novella paints a grim view of the future and of interstellar travel and alien contact. Earth has been ravaged by war, pollution, and violent climatic changes, and the menacing intelligence the crew of the Montelius discover on Piros leads to a government cover-up. The author uses Audrey Cather's three reconditioned ballpoint pens as a literary device, dividing the story into three sections, "The First Pen", "The Second Pen", and "The Third Pen". The Dry Salvages provides an example of an unreliable narrator, as Audrey Cather continually makes mistakes and contradicts herself regarding events aboard the Montelius.
The Viagens Interplanetarias series is a sequence of science fiction stories by L. Sprague de Camp, begun in the late 1940s and written under the influence of contemporary space opera and sword and planet stories, particularly Edgar Rice Burroughs's Martian novels. Set in the future in the 21st and 22nd centuries, the series is named for the quasi-public Terran agency portrayed as monopolizing interstellar travel, the Brazilian-dominated Viagens Interplanetarias. It is also known as the Krishna series, as the majority of the stories belong to a sequence set on a fictional planet of that name. While de Camp started out as a science fiction writer and his early reputation was based on his short stories in the genre, the Viagens tales represent his only extended science fiction series.
All cephalopods possess flexible limbs extending from their heads and surrounding their beaks. These appendages, which function as muscular hydrostats, have been variously termed arms, legs or tentacles.
Lybia tessellata is a species of small crab in the family Xanthidae. It is found in shallow parts of the tropical Indo-Pacific Ocean. Like other members of the genus Lybia, it is commonly known as the pom-pom crab,cheerleader crab, or boxer crab because of its habit of carrying a sea anemone around in each of its claws, these resembling pom-poms or boxing gloves.
Cephalopods, usually specifically octopuses, squids, nautiluses and cuttlefishes, are most commonly represented in popular culture in the Western world as creatures that spray ink and use their tentacles to persistently grasp at and hold onto objects or living creatures.
"Black Destroyer" is a science fiction short story by Canadian-American writer A. E. van Vogt, first published in Astounding SF in July 1939. It has been marked as the story that represents the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
Seabed mining, also known as Seafloor mining is the recovery of minerals from the seabed by techniques of underwater mining. The concept includes mining at shallow depths on the continental shelf and deep-sea mining at greater depths associated with tectonic activity, hydrothermal vents and the abyssal plains. The increased requirement for minerals and metals used in the technology sector has led to a renewed interest in the mining of seabed mineral resources, including massive polymetallic sulfide deposits around hydrothermal vents, cobalt-rich crusts on the sides of seamounts and fields of manganese nodules on the abyssal plains. While the seabed provides a high concentration of valuable minerals, there is an unknown risk of ecological damage on marine species because of a lack of data.