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"Generally, the human race avoids doing anything radical until forced into it."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| Displacement Booth | ||
| A teleportation portal. |
The displacement booths were the sole and ubiquitous form of travel in the future society of the novel.
| A displacement booth was a glass cylinder with a rounded top. The machinery that made the magic work was invisible, buried beneath the booth. Coin slots and a telephone dial were set into the glass at sternum level.
Jerryberry inserted his CBA credit card below the coin slots. He dialled by punching numbered buttons. Withdrawing the credit card closed a circuit. An eyeblink later he was in an office in the Central Broadcasting Association building in Downtown Los Angeles. |
| Technovelgy from Flash Crowd,
by Larry Niven. Published by Fantasy And Science Fiction in 1972 Additional resources -
|
Displacement booths are similar to the more technologically advanced stepping discs created by the alien Puppeteers of Niven's 1970 novel Ringworld.
In Flash Crowd, Niven explores the idea more thoroughly than in Ringworld. He adds additional material about how stepping discs are used by Puppeteers in his new book Fleet of Worlds, written with Edward M. Lerner.
Compare to the telepomp from The Man Without a Body (1877) by Edward Page Mitchell, the
stepping discs from Ringworld (1970) by Larry Niven and the
trip box from Eye of Cat (1982) by Roger Zelazny.
Also, see the libra-transmitter from Into the Meteorite Orbit by Frank R. Kelly, the cosmic express from The Cosmic Express by Jack Williamson, Jaunte from The Stars My Destination, the Transo from Time is the Simplest Thing by Clifford Simak and the geofractor (1939) from One Against the Legion by Jack Williamson.
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'The pitiless M rays pierced Earth and steel and densest concrete as if they were so much transparent glass...'
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'
'Nanny is different,' Tom Fields murmured... 'she's not like a machine. She's like a person.'
'We made a crude , small cell and were delighted - and, I admit, somewhat surprised - to find it worked.'
'...we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'The clothes and jewelery drew their tiny power requirements from her movements.'
'At the end of each appendage's eight fingers there are tinier appendages...'
'We want to do something to help those who are suffering from tooth loss or absence,' said lead researcher Katsu Takahashi.
