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"Does it open a new horizon for my thinking? Does it lead me to think new kinds of thoughts, that I would not otherwise perhaps have thought at all? These qualities are what [make] science fiction ...unique."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| Bubble Car | ||
| Self-steering, hovering, this is the car of the future. |
The novel, in fact, takes place far into the future. The protagonist Corbel has awakened to find the future very different from anything he expected.
| She gestured him ahead of her, toward a bubble-car like those he had found in One City. Where his feet fell big insects fled, whirring. The car seemed to rest on the very tips of the grass blades. It did not shift as Corbell climbed in. Mirelly-Lyra gestured to him to slide over... and climbed in beside him. She bent to the console, hesitated, then punched in numbers. "We go for your pressure suit," said the translator at her belt. The car moved smoothly away. Mirelly-Lyra half relaxed; she was not steering. Already, Corbell knew that he could not return by car. He didn't know the destination number of the house. Down the hill and into a narrow valley the car drove, accelerating. Now they were moving at hellish speed. Corbell gripped a padded bar on the dashboard and wished he dared close his eyes. She was studying him. "You did not use such cars?" "No." Inspiration made him say, "We didn't have such things on Dogpatch." |
| Technovelgy from A World Out of Time,
by Larry Niven. Published by Random House in 1976 Additional resources -
|
The bubble cars present a uniquely individualized answer to the problems of mass transit. No one needs directions; you only need to know the code number for the place you are going. The car (and the network that operates it) knows exactly where it is going and the best route to get there. You don't need to steer at all.
Compare to the automatic automobile from David H. Keller's 1935 story The Living Machine.
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Tech news articles related to works by Larry Niven
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- WEpod Driverless Vehicle On The Netherlands Roads
- California Proposes Ban On Driverless Vehicles
| Boring Company Drills Asimov's Single Vehicle Tunnels |
| Boring Company Vegas Loop Like Asimov Said |
| SpaceX Rocket Shuttle Point-To-Point On Earth |
| CORLEO Robotic Horse Concept Looks Ready To Ride |
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'Then she looked up with a smile and moved closer to the camera.'
'... folios and tapes and playable discs of platinum alloy.'
'... another corner of his mind began to think about the shields.'
'Michel Ardan, as a Frenchman, was declared chief cook, an important function, which raised no rival.'
'Sapiro’s computer just kept dialing at random, hanging up on humans, until it got a fellow computer of the same type as itself.'
'I request that you feed the correlation between those dots and the levers of the panel into my memory banks.'
