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"Cyberpunk worked when the Internet was in its hand-wound crystal radio phase, when you had to be a sort of hobbyist to do e-mail, and it all had a very steep learning curve. Those days are over."
- William Gibson
 |
| Harvesting Saturn's Rings | ||
| Mining the rings for industrial purposes. |
Bitingly sarcastic commentary from Bester.
| Saturn was quite a sight as it came looming up... Alas, only the two inner rings remain. Despite violent protests by ecologists and cosmologists, the Better Building Conglomerate had been permitted to harvest the third outer ring for some kind of better building aggregate. There was a housing crisis, and the [Conglomerate] paid enormous taxes. One infuriated astronomer had been euthanized for burning the chairman of the board. |
| Technovelgy from The Computer Connection,
by Alfred Bester. Published by Berkeley Publishing in 1974 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the earliest mention of the idea of mining Saturn's rings that I know about, the space placers from The Day We Celebrate, a 1941 short story by Nelson S. Bond.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Computer Connection
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and Technology by Alfred Bester
Tech news articles related to The Computer Connection
Tech news articles related to works by Alfred Bester
Harvesting Saturn's Rings-related
news articles:
- Planetary Parks Proposed For Mars Conservation
- Maybe We Should Harvest Saturn's Rings While We Still Can
| Starship Special Edition For Lunar Shuttle |
| Capturing Asteroids With Nets |
| Project Hyperion - Generation Ship Designers Needed! |
| Marslink Proposed By SpaceX |
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'...they moved with the ease of dandelion puffs.'
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'These pods were programmed to hang in space in a hexagonal grid pattern...'
'...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...'
