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Life-Line

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EntityQ3240086· pop 6· linked from 58 articles

"Life-Line" is a short story by American author Robert A. Heinlein. Published in the August 1939 edition of Astounding, it was Heinlein's first published short story.

Book · Open Library

Author
Gregory Howard Williams
First published
1995
Editions
5
Subjects
Social conditions, African American lawyers, African Americans, Childhood and youth, Biography, Nonfiction, Sociology, Afro-Americans

via Open Library

~2 min read

Encyclopedic overview

4 sections
Contents
  • Writing history
  • Reception
  • References
  • External links

"Life-Line" is a short story by American author Robert A. Heinlein. Published in the August 1939 edition of Astounding, it was Heinlein's first published short story.

The protagonist, Professor Hugo Pinero, builds a machine that will predict how long a person will live. It does this by sending a signal along the world line of a person and detecting the echo from the far end. Professor Pinero's invention has a powerful impact on the life insurance industry, as well as on his own life.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Life-Line” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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