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"The bottom line in the Dune trilogy is: beware of heroes. Much better to rely on your own judgment, and your own mistakes."
- Frank Herbert
 |
| Monoline | ||
| A wind-driven overland transport. |
| Wind blew in sails, and trolley wheels whispered down the monoline - a half inch strand of white Swamp Island cable. From the dome at Swamp City, the line led from spine to spine across three miles of swamp to a rocky headland; it crossed over the rotten bassalt with only six inches to spare, swung in a wide curve to the southeast. At fifty foot intervals, L-brackets mounted to poles supported the line, so designed that the trolleys slid across with only a tremor and slight thud of contact. |
| Technovelgy from Big Planet,
by Jack Vance. Published by Startling Stories in 1952 Additional resources -
|
The wood was shaped and fitted with painstaking precision, and performed as well as any metal machine from the shops of Earth.
Thanks to an anonymous reader for this item.The big wheel was laminated from ten seperate strips, glued, grooved and polished. Spokes of hardened withe supported the central hub, whose bearings were wrought from a greasy black hardwood... Propulsion was achieved by sails, set to a lateen boom... Within reach was a double hand-crank,offset like the pedals of a bicycle; turning the crank would drive the trolley up any slight slope at the end of a long suspension which momentum and the pressure of the sails were unable to negotiate.
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'...they moved with the ease of dandelion puffs.'
'...some bored drone pusher in a remote driving centre...'
'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...'
