Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Raymond Chandler Mentioned Google in the ’50s

Raymond Chandler, the 1888-born crime fiction author and inventor of detective Philip Marlowe, mentioned “Google” way back in 1953 in a letter to his agent (my emphasis; you can find two references to this passage in Google Books, too):

Did you ever read what they call Science Fiction? It’s a scream. It’s written like this: ’I checked out with K19 on Adabaran III, and stepped out through the crummaliote hatch on my 22 Model Sirus Hardtop. I cocked the timeprojector in secondary and waded through the bright blue manda grass. My breath froze into pink pretzels. I flicked on the heat bars and the Bryllis ran swiftly on five legs, using the other two to send out crylon vibrations. The pressure was almost unbearable, but I caught the range on my wrist computer through the transparent cysicites. I pressed the trigger. The thin violet glow was ice-cold against the rust-colored mountains. The Brysllis shrank to half an inch long and I worked fast stepping on them with the poltex. But it wasn’t enough. The sudden brightness swung me round and the Fourth Moon had already risen. I had exactly four seconds to hot up the disintegrator and Google had told me it wasn’t enough.

[Thanks Stephen Glynn! Photo based on a public domain work at Wikipedia.]

Raymond Chandler Mentione ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (6)

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