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"If you don't care about science enough to be interested in it on its own, you shouldn't try to write hard science fiction."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Gyro Two-Wheeled Truck | ||
| A gyroscopically-stabilized truck with just two wheels. |
| Now Alexander saw that the two-wheeled truck was still waiting, backed up to the loading platform...
 (Gyro Truck from 'The Sign of the Tiger' by Nourse and Meyer) The Gyro was one of the air-driven Robling types, very simple, vey reliable, the flywheel driven by a tiny stream of air impinging on the peripheral turbine blades. Once it was in motion, very little air was needed to keep the heavy rotor turning at a high enough velocity to stabilize tha truck. |
| Technovelgy from The Sign of the Tiger,
by Alan Nourse (w/Meyer). Published by Amazing Science Fiction Stories in 1958 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the gyrocar from Two Boys in a Gyrocar the story of a New York to Paris motor race (1911) by Kenneth Brown, the Gyro-Hat from An Experiment in Gyro-Hats (1926) by Ellis Parker Butler, the tumblebug from The Roads Must Roll (1940) by Robert Heinlein, the Two-Wheeled Ground Car from First Lensman (1950) by E.E. 'Doc' Smith, the Gyrocar (Gyro) from The Ring (1969) by Piers Anthony (w/R. Margroff) and the smart bike from Distraction (1998) by Bruce Sterling.
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'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
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'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...'
