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"...being predictive, being right about the future, is not the point of any given story or novel. The point is about exploring as wide a range of possibilities as possible."
- Peter Watts
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| Jumpdoor | ||
| The entrance to an energy passage providing instantaneous transportation between points across the galaxy. |
How might it be possible to move from one place to another, without traversing the space in between? Frank Herbert takes a shot at it in Whipping Star:
| The jumpdoor began to hum with its aura of terrifying energies. The door's vortal tube snapped open. McKie tensed himself for the syrupy resistance to jumpdoor passage, stepped through the tube. It was like swimming in air became molasses - perfectly normal-appearing air. But molasses. McKie found himself in a rather ordinary office.. |
| Technovelgy from Whipping Star,
by Frank Herbert. Published by Galaxy Publishing in 1969 Additional resources -
|
Jumpdoors can be dangerous; just make sure you're all the way through when they close.
The phrase “jump door” refers to the door opened in the side of an airplane for people to jump out. I remember Robert Heinlein using it in The Puppet Masters:
Two hours later we were coming in on our target and the jump door was open. Dad and I were last in line, after the kids who would do the real work. My hands were sweaty with the old curtain-going-up tension. I was scared as hell—I never did like to jump.
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'He was in a high-ceilinged windowless cell with walls of glittering white porcelain.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors...'
'The robant and the tiny old woman entered the control room slowly...'
'Guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs... What are the odds?'
'It is as you thought when you constructed the time crystal, my master Vaylan.'
'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
