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"the [science fiction] writer should be able to convince the reader (and himself) that the wonders he is describing really can come true...and that gets tricky when you take a good, hard look at the world around you."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Megadont | ||
| An engineered mastodon, used to convert vegetable matter into energy. |
How else will you wind up your kink-springs?
| Lalji and Shriram had been standing in the winding room of Ganesha Kinetic, watching a misplaced ton of SuperFlavor burn into joules. Shriram’s paired megodonts labored against the winding spindles, ponderous and steady as they turned just-consumed calories into kinetic energy and wound the shop’s main storage springs.
Priti and Bidi. The massive creatures barely resembled the elephants that had once provided their template DNA. Generippers had honed them to a perfect balance of musculature and hunger for a single purpose: to inhale calories and do terrible labors without complaint. The smell of them was overwhelming. |
| Technovelgy from The Calorie Man,
by Paolo Bacigalupi. Published by F&SF in 2005 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the power-wagons from Jack Vance's 1967 novel The Last Castle for an interesting inversion of this idea.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Calorie Man
More Ideas
and Technology by Paolo Bacigalupi
Tech news articles related to The Calorie Man
Tech news articles related to works by Paolo Bacigalupi
| 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 |
| Tsunami Forecasts Improved By Ionosphere Signals |
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'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
'Gaines and Harvey mounted tumblebugs, and kept abreast of the Cadet Captain...'
Accompanied by a small selection of similar ideas from science fiction.
'...war-balloons, or, as it would be more correct to call them, navigable aerostats.'
