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"I received a nice letter the other day from the Dalai Lama. He had read 'The Nine Billion Names of God'. It is about a computer at a Tibetan monastery."
- Arthur C. Clarke
 |
| Great Pain of Space | ||
| A kind of fatal space sickness afflicting humans who travel in space. |
An inherent problem with space travel.
| With men trying to work and cursing him for a Scanner while he, professional zeal aroused, fought to do his job and keep them alive in the Great Pain of Space...
What could any Other know of the Up-and-Out? What Other could look at the biting acid beauty of the stars in open space? What could they tell of the Great Pain, which started quietly in the marrow, like an ache, and proceeded by the fatigue and nausea of each separate nerve cell, brain cell, touchpoint in the body, until life itself became a terrible aching hunger for silence and for death? |
| Technovelgy from Scanners Live in Vain,
by Cordwainer Smith. Published by Fantasy Publishing Co. Inc. in 1950 Additional resources -
|
Compare to space-sick from Ralph 124c 41+ (1911) by Hugo Gernsback, space madness from A Daring Trip to Mars (1931) by Max Valier, moon-terror from Star of Dreams (1941) by Jack Williamson, gravitation paralysis from The World With A Thousand Moons (1942) by Edmond Hamilton, Space Scurvy (Kenoalgia) from Sacred Martian Pig (1949) by Margaret Saint Clair, space phobia from Let 'em Breathe Space! (1953) by Lester del Rey and desubstantiation effect from Death's End (2010) by Cixin Liu.
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'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
'Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows.'
'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
