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"I don't have an e-mail address. As much as I admire the Internet I suffer literally agoraphobia, which in it's original sense means a fear of the marketplace. I do not want to receive three hundred e-mail messages per week from strangers…"
- William Gibson
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| Space Tunnel | ||
| An enclosed gang plank extended between space ships. |
| “I’m Hal Bailey, owner of Mars. If that doesn’t convey anything try ‘Excellent Friend.’ ” “You’re — you’re him are you?” He heard her gasp. “Excuse me! I can explain this . . . Come on over.” She opened her ship’s outer lock. Hal lowered his space-tunnel into position, crossed into the girl’s control room.* The place was littered with spectrometers, charts, maps, sextants, and Martian desert drawings... She broke the magnetic contact holding the tunnel to Hal’s ship and it folded back in place. * Space Tunnel — A space “gang plank” entirely inclosed, extending from airlock to airlock of adjoining ships— folding up concertinawise when not in use. — Ed. |
| Technovelgy from The Man Who Bought Mars,
by Polton Cross. Published by Fantastic Adventures in 1941 Additional resources -
|
A similar idea is used in Solar Plexus (1941) by James Blish:
A tube! A flexible, airtight tube. Like those used for freight transfer in space. It connected the airlock of his ship with that of the stranger. Lights at the other end of it, within an open lock, gleamed yellowly. Incandescents! It was an old ship, all right.
Compare to the tubular space-gangway from The Star Roamers (1933) by Edmond Hamilton.
He grabbed for the inner door of the lock to slide it shut. But he stood rigid, still reaching for it vacantly, as he saw to his horror that the outer door was in motion, slowly inching open. He grabbed for a stanchion to brace himself against the rush of air into the vacuum—none came. What—?
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More Ideas
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Tech news articles related to The Man Who Bought Mars
Tech news articles related to works by Polton Cross
| Beautiful Visualization of Dawn Spacecraft |
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| Reflect Orbital Sunlight On Demand |
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'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
