Get the latest tech news

Quote Origin: I had exactly four seconds and Google had told me it wasn’t enough

Raymond Chandler? Barry N. Malzberg? Vlad Savov? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: Apparently, sometime during the 1950s a popular writer of detective fiction crafted a short passage parodying science fiction.

Alternatively, Chandler may have been influenced by the comic strip character Barney Google or by the term “Googol” which refers to the enormous number 10 100 which can be written as 1 followed by one hundred zeroes. I waded through the bright blue manda grass toward the beckoning Bryll, feeling the pull of the mud as I tried to clamber away, retain balance. This more than anything else they enjoy, taking our dignity, making us cartoons, yanking from us the solemnity of our distress and placing us on a flat and colorful map where we deal with pale, exploded forms who may or may not be representative of the Brylls themselves.

Get the Android app