Conference noted::sf

    I remember a story about "slow glass", but I'm pretty sure it wasn't
    by Larry Niven, and I'm not sure it involved a murder.  I think it was
    titled "The Light of Other Days" or something like that.  Someone
    active in this conference knows the details because I asked a question
    about it some time ago, and got the correct citation.  Of course, I
    don't remember who or where...
    
    len.
    

    The book in question was written by Bob Shaw, and I believe was titled
    "Other Days, Other Eyes". The glass itself was called Retardite..
    
    /jim

    The story I remember was a short story, from a multiauthor anthology.
    It had a bittersweet ambience - someone was using the slow glass to
    remember someone dear to them who had died.
    
    len.
    

    I believe there's a Slow Glass story in one of the Nebula Award
    collections. (I, too, remember the bittersweet story as well.)
    
    					andrew

    Shaw first introduced `slow glass' in the short story `Light of
    Other Days' in 1966.  He expanded on the idea in the novel `Other
    Day, Other Eyes' in 1972.  He's an excellent author in general,
    but hasn't been heard much from recently.  He's about 60 years
    old now.  His most famous work is probably `Orbitsville', which is
    about a Dyson sphere that acts as a peculiar trap.
    /jlr

    I've modified the topic title to reflect the true author of the
    Slow Glass idea.
    
    As previous replies have mentioned, the concept was created in the
    short story "Light of Other Days". It didn't win either the Hugo
    or Nebula, though it was nominated for the latter. It's been
    anthologized all over the place. It was (as previously mentioned)
    expanded into the fix-up novel OTHER DAYS, OTHER EYES, which has
    unfortunately been out of print for quite some time.
    
    I think less of Shaw in general than does JLR, but "Light of Other
    Days" is undeniably a classic.
    
    --- jerry

    
    	I thought Other Days, Other Eyes was a collection of shorts, all
    written around the slow glass theme. I remember the "bitter sweet"
    story involving a Retardite picture window which would eventualy show
    the main character's living room, complete with loved one. Another
    story involved a murder committed beneath a Retardite street lamp
    (gathers light during the day, emmits it at night). The police merely
    had to wait a few hours and then they could watch the whole thing.
    
    		Ian G.  

    This slow glass sounds like a good thing. A piece of it would make a
    good substitute for a video recorder.
    
    
    Dave Hazel

    
    You can find a slow glass short in the anthology "Robert Silverberg's
    Worlds of Wonder".  Its the one about a glass "farmer" who uses a piece
    to view his dead family.
    
    					-St

  re: Note 1002.8 by CHEST::HAZEL 

  >    This slow glass sounds like a good thing. A piece of it would make a
  >    good substitute for a video recorder.

  Also a good battery if you could manage to control the rate of release.
  That was one of the quibbles about slow glass -- the amount of energy it 
  had to store and what would happen if it is released all at once.
    
  JP

    It would, of course, be completely reprehensible of me to suggest that
    bureaucrats wear spectacles made out of slow glass...:-)
    
    ...but I'll suggest it anyway.
    
    
    Dave Hazel

    Bob Shaw hasn't been heard much from recently?  So who's the author of
    "The Wooden Spacehips", "The Ragged Astronauts" and (I think) "The
    Wandering Worlds" plus at least one sequel to "Orbitsville" and the
    recent short story collection "Dark Night in Toyland."?  Maybe it's
    really his friend the eccentric scientist Eric Von Donnigon who's
    writing these books and getting nominated for the Arthur C Clark award
    under the pseudonym "Bob Shaw"? (Check out one of his "Serious and
    Scientific Talks" at a worldcon or British Eastercon, and you might
    find out.) :-)
    
    john

    Didn't one of the Shaw stories end with the chilling hint that some
    'Governmental' agency had/would seed the entire globe with minute
    fragments of slow glass ? (they were of short thickness - coupla months
    I think - and the general idea seemed to be that a simple 'dusting' of
    the area would give you fragments of glass that would show what had
    occured there over the past few months .......). I don't have the Shaw
    stuff here with me so I can't be sure. Anyone else ?
    
    /f

    Yes, this idea was contained in one of Shaw's stories, although I seem
    to remember that the ending was a little more upbeat.  The dusting of
    slow glass meant that no-one could ever carry out a crime undetected. 
    I can't tell you the title, though.
    

    In the novelization, the protangonist is called in to try to solve a 
    poltical assasination and he is told that security knows who did it and
    and how they did it, although security won't tell how they know. The
    protagonist's job is to prove how it was done and gather information so
    that a trial can be held. The protagonist solves the crime rather
    ingeniously and then begins to wonder how security knew. He finally
    realizes that the government is dusting the countryside with retardite
    dust (and retardite being capable of near infinite resolution and
    apparrently suspension of the laws of physics) and they picked up
    samples of the dust around the scene of the accident and used the
    images stored therein to know how the crime was committed. He and his
    girl friend then go public to stop the dusting.
    
    /jim