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"I can remember when the first pulsars were discovered. I was able to go and sit down and listen to graduate students talking about what their theories, to explain what pulsars really were."
- Vernor Vinge
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| Hammock Crutches | ||
| How would worm-like creatures walk about under heavy gravity? |
| Humanity steeled itself for the coming ordeal of horror under the Troxxt.
THEY WERE truly worm-like in form. As soon as the two night-black cylinders had landed, they strode, from their ships, their tiny segmented bodies held off the ground by a complex harness supported Dy long and slender metal crutches. They erected a dome-like fort around each ship — one in Australia and one in the Ukraine — captured the few courageous individuals who had ventured close to their landing-sites, and disappeared back into the dark craft with their squirming prizes... And over all — courteously caring for us like an intelligent parent — were our mentors, taking their giant supervisory strides on metallic crutches, while their pale little bodies lay curled in the hammocks that swung from each paired length of shining leg. |
| Technovelgy from Liberation of Earth,
by William Tenn. Published by Future Science Fiction in 1953 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the robass from The Quest for Saint Aquin (1951) by Anthony Boucher and the the centipede-machine from Monsters of Mars (1931) by Edmond Hamilton, the centipede from Killing Titan (2015) by Greg Bear and the Walker Wagon from Farmer in the Sky (1950) by Robert Heinlein.
(Walker Wagon from Farmer in the Sky)
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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...'
