Book 1: "Web of Everywhere" by John Brunner
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 14:45![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwakeNext he came to a small study, with an open bureau bearing a Halda typewriter, documents in pigeon-holes, a pile of dusty correspondence papers which he blew at gently until the name and address were legible. From it he learned that the house's owners had been called Eriksson, that they were indeed in Sweden, near a place called Umeå, which he would have to look up on a map when he got home, and something else which struck him as simply incredible!
Their skelter code was printed on the letterhead!
The skelter is a transportation device that lets you walk through its door and out of any other skelter on the planet, as long as you know its code. There are even skelters that open straight into to the heart of an incinerator, although their codes are strictly controlled to stop people making use of them to dispose of dead bodies and other evidence of criminal activity, rather than just rubbish.
Supposedly the invention of the skelter caused worldwide devastation, as there was originally no way of preventing access to anyone who knew the code. As well as facilitating robbery and crimes of violence, it also allowed terrorists and saboteurs easy access to plant bombs and make a quick getaway to the other side of the world, and allowed diseases to spread with impunity. The human race has been decimated by the skelter, and a disease called contagious puerperal fever has led to a gender imbalance, with 5 men to 3 women (and not many of them are fertile, since any woman not immune to CPF is sterilised for their own safety). Now that a device called the privateer has been invented that allows you to screen incomers to your skelter, and deny them access, the elite, skelter using population tend to live on islands, although there are some people who are 'stuck', unable to bring themselves to walk through the door of a skelter, for fear of what might happen, and there are also skelter-hating populations living at a lower technological level. Stealing skelter codes or using them to invade someone's privacy is punishable by being forced to wear a bracelet that prevents access to the skelter system.
I can't see that anyone would actually want to have such an insecure device providing access to their homes. In reality, the rich might have private skelters (although I am sure that they would be placed just outside their well-guarded perimeter defences), but I am sure that everyone else would just use public skelters.
Their skelter code was printed on the letterhead!
The skelter is a transportation device that lets you walk through its door and out of any other skelter on the planet, as long as you know its code. There are even skelters that open straight into to the heart of an incinerator, although their codes are strictly controlled to stop people making use of them to dispose of dead bodies and other evidence of criminal activity, rather than just rubbish.
Supposedly the invention of the skelter caused worldwide devastation, as there was originally no way of preventing access to anyone who knew the code. As well as facilitating robbery and crimes of violence, it also allowed terrorists and saboteurs easy access to plant bombs and make a quick getaway to the other side of the world, and allowed diseases to spread with impunity. The human race has been decimated by the skelter, and a disease called contagious puerperal fever has led to a gender imbalance, with 5 men to 3 women (and not many of them are fertile, since any woman not immune to CPF is sterilised for their own safety). Now that a device called the privateer has been invented that allows you to screen incomers to your skelter, and deny them access, the elite, skelter using population tend to live on islands, although there are some people who are 'stuck', unable to bring themselves to walk through the door of a skelter, for fear of what might happen, and there are also skelter-hating populations living at a lower technological level. Stealing skelter codes or using them to invade someone's privacy is punishable by being forced to wear a bracelet that prevents access to the skelter system.
I can't see that anyone would actually want to have such an insecure device providing access to their homes. In reality, the rich might have private skelters (although I am sure that they would be placed just outside their well-guarded perimeter defences), but I am sure that everyone else would just use public skelters.
