The Little Black Bag
E871840
The Little Black Bag is a classic science fiction short story by Cyril M. Kornbluth about a futuristic medical device that falls into the hands of an unqualified doctor, exploring themes of technology, ethics, and human folly.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| The Little Black Bag canonical | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T10568075 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: The Little Black Bag Context triple: [Cyril M. Kornbluth, notableWork, The Little Black Bag]
-
A.
Handbagged
Handbagged is a satirical stage play by Moira Buffini that imagines sharp, witty encounters between Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s.
-
B.
Little Brown Bag
Little Brown Bag is Bloomingdale’s iconic small-sized shopping bag, widely recognized as a fashion and retail design symbol.
-
C.
Precious Little
Precious Little is a play by Madeleine George that explores language, communication, and human connection through the story of a linguist facing a difficult prenatal diagnosis.
-
D.
The Pink Dress
The Pink Dress is an 1864 Impressionist painting by Frédéric Bazille depicting a woman in a pink gown standing on a terrace overlooking the countryside.
-
E.
The Luggage
The Luggage is a nearly indestructible, many-legged, semi-sentient chest from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, known for relentlessly following its owner and devouring anything that threatens them.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: The Little Black Bag Target entity description: The Little Black Bag is a classic science fiction short story by Cyril M. Kornbluth about a futuristic medical device that falls into the hands of an unqualified doctor, exploring themes of technology, ethics, and human folly.
-
A.
Handbagged
Handbagged is a satirical stage play by Moira Buffini that imagines sharp, witty encounters between Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s.
-
B.
Little Brown Bag
Little Brown Bag is Bloomingdale’s iconic small-sized shopping bag, widely recognized as a fashion and retail design symbol.
-
C.
Precious Little
Precious Little is a play by Madeleine George that explores language, communication, and human connection through the story of a linguist facing a difficult prenatal diagnosis.
-
D.
The Pink Dress
The Pink Dress is an 1864 Impressionist painting by Frédéric Bazille depicting a woman in a pink gown standing on a terrace overlooking the countryside.
-
E.
The Luggage
The Luggage is a nearly indestructible, many-legged, semi-sentient chest from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, known for relentlessly following its owner and devouring anything that threatens them.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (25)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
literary work
ⓘ
science fiction short story ⓘ |
| author | Cyril M. Kornbluth NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| centralConflict | clash between advanced medical technology and human moral weakness ⓘ |
| countryOfOrigin |
United States of America
ⓘ
surface form:
United States
|
| explores |
consequences of giving powerful tools to unqualified people
ⓘ
tension between progress and responsibility ⓘ |
| featuresCharacter | unqualified doctor ⓘ |
| featuresItem | futuristic medical device ⓘ |
| genre | science fiction ⓘ |
| language | English ⓘ |
| literaryPeriod | 20th-century science fiction ⓘ |
| narrativePerspective | third-person narration ⓘ |
| notableFor |
exploration of ethical implications of future medicine
ⓘ
satirical treatment of human greed and stupidity ⓘ |
| originalMedium | magazine publication ⓘ |
| plotSummary | A highly advanced medical bag from the future accidentally ends up in the hands of an incompetent, disgraced doctor, leading to both miraculous cures and tragic consequences. ⓘ |
| setting | near-future Earth ⓘ |
| theme |
human folly
ⓘ
medical ethics ⓘ misuse of advanced technology ⓘ professional responsibility ⓘ social inequality ⓘ technology ⓘ |
| workOf | Cyril M. Kornbluth NERFINISHED ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: The Little Black Bag Description of subject: The Little Black Bag is a classic science fiction short story by Cyril M. Kornbluth about a futuristic medical device that falls into the hands of an unqualified doctor, exploring themes of technology, ethics, and human folly.
Referenced by (1)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.