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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Gyro Two-Wheeled Truck | ||
| A gyroscopically-stabilized truck with just two wheels. |
| Now Alexander saw that the two-wheeled truck was still waiting, backed up to the loading platform...
 (Gyro Truck from 'The Sign of the Tiger' by Nourse and Meyer) The Gyro was one of the air-driven Robling types, very simple, vey reliable, the flywheel driven by a tiny stream of air impinging on the peripheral turbine blades. Once it was in motion, very little air was needed to keep the heavy rotor turning at a high enough velocity to stabilize tha truck. |
| Technovelgy from The Sign of the Tiger,
by Alan Nourse (w/Meyer). Published by Amazing Science Fiction Stories in 1958 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the gyrocar from Two Boys in a Gyrocar the story of a New York to Paris motor race (1911) by Kenneth Brown, the Gyro-Hat from An Experiment in Gyro-Hats (1926) by Ellis Parker Butler, the tumblebug from The Roads Must Roll (1940) by Robert Heinlein, the Two-Wheeled Ground Car from First Lensman (1950) by E.E. 'Doc' Smith, the Gyrocar (Gyro) from The Ring (1969) by Piers Anthony (w/R. Margroff) and the smart bike from Distraction (1998) by Bruce Sterling.
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Tech news articles related to works by Alan Nourse (w/Meyer)
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'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
'Gaines and Harvey mounted tumblebugs, and kept abreast of the Cadet Captain...'
Accompanied by a small selection of similar ideas from science fiction.
'...war-balloons, or, as it would be more correct to call them, navigable aerostats.'
