Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"My feeling is that the chance of our surviving into the twenty-first century as working civilization is less than fifty percent but greater than zero."
- Isaac Asimov
 |
| D-9 Motherspinner | ||
| An enormous genetically engineered spider used to create large structures in space. |
What do you do when you need a lot more spider silk for your orbital structures? Tens of thousands of miles more? Easy - you build a bigger spider.
| "My father works a D-9," she said proudly, pointing at something on the bug's back. "My god!" I said. "That's a man. Is that your father?" "No, he works on the new Eight spoke, just getting started on that one..." It took me a moment to realize that she was talking about her father's D-9 Motherspinner. I was still taken aback by the man riding the eigh-legged behemoth. Until that moment I had not known they were piloted... The rider was in a pressurized box, like a howdah strapped to the back of an elephant. It was mounted behind the basketball-sized eyes and in front of the giant black sphere of her abdomen. He looked like the operator of a big crane or shovel, and that wasn't too far off the mark. He pulled levers and turned pulleys in a competent, bussinesslike way, and the spider turned or moved forward. "The D-9's don't weave," Poly said. "They sit in one spot and start extruding silk, and smaller spiders grab those and start running with them. She can put out thousands of miles of silk at one sitting. |
| Technovelgy from The Golden Globe,
by John Varley. Published by Ace Books in 1998 Additional resources -
|
Compare to these early ideas of purposive genetic engineering, the designed bacteria from Golden Age great Raymond Z. Gallun's short story Seeds of Dusk and the manufactured monsters from H.G. Wells' 1896 novel The Island of Dr. Moreau.
Thanks to Erik Glenn for suggesting this item.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Golden Globe
More Ideas
and Technology by John Varley
Tech news articles related to The Golden Globe
Tech news articles related to works by John Varley
| Black Fungus Blocks Radiation |
| Lunar Biorepository Proposed For Cryo-Preservation Of Earth Species |
| Let's Make Slaver Sunflowers! Engineering Plants To Reflect Light |
| Machete-Wielding Philodendron Isn't Going To Take It Anymore |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Science Fiction Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
'Then she looked up with a smile and moved closer to the camera.'
'... folios and tapes and playable discs of platinum alloy.'
'... another corner of his mind began to think about the shields.'
'Michel Ardan, as a Frenchman, was declared chief cook, an important function, which raised no rival.'
'Sapiro’s computer just kept dialing at random, hanging up on humans, until it got a fellow computer of the same type as itself.'
'I request that you feed the correlation between those dots and the levers of the panel into my memory banks.'
