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"[Science fiction] has become big business, where books are merchandised and promoted and distributed and placed on sale like slabs of bacon or cans of soup."
- Frederik Pohl

Inflatable Living-Globe  
  An inflatable bubble in space, suitable for human habitation.  

When the eviction order arrived, Fats Jordan was hanging in the center of the Big Glass Balloon, hugging his guitar to his massive black belly above his purple shorts.

The Big Igloo, as the large living-Globe was more often called, was not really made of glass. It was sealingsilk, a cheap flexible material almost as transparent as fused silica and ten thousand times tougher—quite tough enough to hold a breathable pressure of air in the hard vacuum of space.


(Living-Globes from 'The Beat Cluster' by Fritz Leiber)

“Beyond the spherical wall loomed the other and somewhat smaller balloons of the Beat Cluster, connected to each other and to the Big Igloo by three-foot-diameter cylindrical tunnels of “triple-strength tinted sealingsilk. In them floated or swam about an assemblage of persons of both sexes in informal dress and undress and engaged in activities suitable to freefall...”

Technovelgy from The Beat Cluster, by Fritz Leiber.
Published by Galaxy in 1961
Additional resources -

Thanks to Winchell Chung of Project Rho for the tip on this Item.

Compare to the space bubbs from The Planet Strappers by Raymond Z. Gallun.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Beat Cluster
  More Ideas and Technology by Fritz Leiber
  Tech news articles related to The Beat Cluster
  Tech news articles related to works by Fritz Leiber

Inflatable Living-Globe-related news articles:
  - MIT Proposes Space Bubbles To Combat Climate Change, Misses The Point Of Space Bubbles

Articles related to Space Tech
Crystalline Structures In Space, You Say?
Amazing Photonic Crystal Light Sail
The New Habitable Zones Include Asimov's Ribbon Worlds
Will Space Stations Have Large Interior Spaces Again?

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