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"Another reason why privacy could be just a passing fad, terrorism is going to get too good. [1997]"
- Larry Niven
 |
| Arteria Portal | ||
| A wormhole entrance. |
| Being on the outermost reaches of the galaxy ... did not necessarily mean that a place was inaccessible, providing it was close to an arteria portal.
Arteria - wormholes - and the portals which were their exits and entrances meant everything in the galactic community; they represented the difference between having to crawl everywhere at less than the speed of light and making almost instantaneous transitions from one stellar system to another... The only way to get an arteria portal from one place to another was to put it in a spaceship and physically take it, slower than light, from one place to another, leaving the other end - usually - anchored where you'd started out. |
| Technovelgy from The Algebraist,
by Iain M Banks. Published by Orbit in 2004 Additional resources -
|
Simmons fans will think of the farcaster from Hyperion [1989].
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| Cislunar Space And The Space Lanes of Golden Age Fiction |
| NASA Moonbase Update |
| The Solar Oberth Slingshot |
| 'If Anyone Is Watching Earth...' |
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'He had travelled the space-lanes of the solar system for the greater part of his life...'
'The dinner was excellent. It was completely vegetarian — grown in specially prepared gardens in this Moon base...'
'Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind.'
'It was a relief to enter one of the comfortable autos, whisper a direction down the tube, and just know that you would be taken to your destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest manner.'
'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
'The vast spinning sphere of Factory in the Sky loomed above and ahead of us, gleaming white against the unfathomable jet depths of surrounding space.'
'And if it doesn’t work,' inquired Lazarus, 'what does that make us? Sunspots?'
'The Dillard people had performed a miracle and put all the works in a girl-modeled case.'
'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
