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"The primary attraction [of writing sf] is the sheer pleasure of creating something from whole cloth."
- Dan Simmons
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| Transfer Cable | ||
| Move between two ships in space. |
This is an early description of a way to move between two ships in space - string a cable between the ships, don spacesuits and off you go.
| ...a heavy magnetic anchor leaped from its catapult toward the passing ship, dragging its cable. It struck the liner's hull, clung fast.
Like a silver fish, the Bellatrix plunged and darted for a time upon the line. But the smaller station held her adroitly, giving her opportunity neither to ram nor to break the cable. And steadily the ships were drawn together as the cable was wound upon its drum.
 (Transfer cable from 'Dead Star Station' by Jack Williamson) Five minutes later, the eleven of us were dragging ourselves across between the ships in clumsy, inflated suits, laden with weapons. As weird a journey as can be imagined, it was. Eleven swollen giants, climbing by their hands along a cable between two vessels in the void. For background, the flaming streamers of the Great Nebula, and the malign black disk of the Dead Star. |
| Technovelgy from Dead Star Station,
by Jack Williamson. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1933 Additional resources -
|
Here's a somewhat mechanized version of this same idea, a ship-to-ship passage in 2010: The Year We Make Contact:
(Passageway between ships in 2010 (movie))
Compare to this view of astronauts moving from one ship to another in space, from Galactic Patrol by EE Smith in 1937:
(Galactic Patrol, Astounding Science Fiction, 1937)
Compare to the transfer tube from The Electronic Siege (1932) by John W. Campbell, the tubular space-gangway from The Star Roamers (1933) by Edmond Hamilton and the space tunnel from The Man Who Bought Mars (1941) by Polton Cross.
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'Space-sickness is one of the most unpleasant sensations that a human being can experience. Not all are subject to it...'
'...I saw a nice black heavy-looking cloud sailing by just now, and I can get the electrical machine out in five minutes to draw it down.'
'From a distance it could resolve the cosmic rays reflected from various substances.'
'The answer to the dumb student's prayer.'
'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...'
