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"I share the view of Pythagoras that the world is number. The ultimate substrate of the universe is math. There's no way to test that - it's pure metaphysical speculation."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Earthport | ||
| A massive spaceport that reared up from the surface of the earth to the edge of the atmosphere. |
| ...Earthport stood like an enormous wineglass, reaching from the magma to the high atmosphere. Earthport had been built during mankind's biggest mechanical splurge. Though men had had nuclear rockets since the beginning of consecutive history, they had used chemical rockets to load the interplanetary ion-drive and nuclear-drive vehicles or to assemble the photonic sail-ships for interstellar cruises. Impatient with the troubles of taking things bit by bit into the sky, they had worked out a billion-ton rocket, only to find that it ruined whatever countryside it touched in landing. The Daimoni-people of Earth extraction, who came back from somewhere beyond the stars-had helped men build [Earthport] of weatherproof, rustproof, timeproof, stressproof material. |
| Technovelgy from The Ballad of Lost C'Mell,
by Cordwainer Smith. Published by Fantasy Publishing Co. in 1950 Additional resources -
|
Who needs those twisty, bendy space elevators when you can build something so solid that (as my dad used to say) it's "not going anywhere!"
Thanks to the anonymous reader who submitted this item.
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'...they moved with the ease of dandelion puffs.'
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'...the meteor caught and halted just as a small boy catches a swift ball in his cap.'
'We have decided that it shall be but one ship... it must contain everything needed to take us through the generations.'
'You’re the robopsychologist of the plant, so you’re to study the robot itself...'
