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"In science fiction one can say a great many things that are unpalatable, … because it's expressed as science fiction you can slip it past their defenses."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| Sargasso Asteroid | ||
| A planetoid built from natural rock and the salvaged wreckage of space craft. |
In the twenty-fourth century, only one truly primitive society still exists - The Scientific People. They were descendants of a research team of scientists that had been lost and marooned in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter two hundred years previously.
Gulliver Foyle, last man alive aboard the space ship Nomad, was taken alive by The Scientific People, his ship to be added to their little world.
| He awoke once while he was being carried in triumph on a litter through the natural and artificial passages within the scavenger asteroid. They were constructed of meteor metal, stone and hull plates... The passages led to great halls, storerooms, apartments and homes, all built of salvaged ships cemented into the asteroid.
In rapid succession, Foyle was borne through an ancient Ganymede scow, a Lassell ice borer, a captain's barge, a Calisto heavy cruiser, a twenty-second-century fuel transport with glass tanks still filled with smoky rocket fuel... |
| Technovelgy from The Stars My Destination,
by Alfred Bester. Published by Berkley in 1956 Additional resources -
|
The Scientific people practiced a "barbaric travesty of the scientific method they remembered from their forebears." Their leader greets Foyle by saying
"Quant suff.!" the crowd bellowed.
Compare the Sargasso Asteroid with the wreck-pack from Edmond Hamilton's 1931 story The Sargasso of Space.
As a space station, compare to the brick moon from The Brick Moon (1869) by Edward Everett Hale, the city of space from The Prince of Space (1931) by Jack Williamson, the New Moon Casino from One Against the Legion (1939) by Jack Williamson, the asteroid space station from Misfit (1939) by Robert Heinlein, the Venus Equilateral Relay Station from QRM - Interplanetary (1942) by George O. Smith, Wheelchair from Waldo (1942) by Robert Heinlein, the space transfer station from Between Planets (1951) by Robert Heinlein, the tether space station from Tank Farm Dynamo (1983) by David Brin and the high orbit archipelago from Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) by William Gibson.
"You are the first to arrive alive in fifty years. You are a puissant man. Arrival of the fittest is the doctrine of Holy Darwin. Most scientific."
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Stars My Destination
More Ideas
and Technology by Alfred Bester
Tech news articles related to The Stars My Destination
Tech news articles related to works by Alfred Bester
| Europa Clipper Plate Carries A Special Message |
| China Wants To Build Mega Space Ships |
| Dream Of Building Your Own Rocket? |
| Used Dragon Cargo Spacecraft Will Fly Again |
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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.
