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"The only real way to maintain privacy is to be uninteresting. It may be that privacy is a passing fad."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Skycycle | ||
| A flying Harley; motorcycle of the skies. |
If you are flying over the desert on a distant planet looking for Grogs in the terrain below, you couldn't ask for a more convenient vehicle than a skycycle.
| We flew on skycycles over a red desert, under the soft red sun of Down... I hadn't been flying a skycycle long. I'm a flatlander. I had spent most of my life in the cities of Earth, where any flying vehicle is illegal unless fully automated.
...I was beginning to feel more comfortable with the [skycycle] under me, this platform with a saddle and an over-sized lift motor and an air pump and a forcefield generator to stop the wind... I dug in my saddlebags, hoping to find a flask. |
| Technovelgy from Handicap,
by Larry Niven. Published by Galaxy Science Fiction in 1967 Additional resources -
|
Niven fans will probably also think of the flycycle from his 1970 novel Ringworld.
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'The crawling, exploring object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
'It radiates outward in a cone which, by the time it has reached our section of space, is many lightyears across.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock.'
'... with a weird simulation of life, the ten forked ends of each arm commenced a rattling pressing of the buttons.'
'Each of the four areas is enclosed by a sonic wall...'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'If you surf over a bump... If you surf over a pothole...'
'Then the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and they stood an instant transfixed...'
'Noiselessly, on rubber-tired wheels, they journeyed...'
