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"the [science fiction] writer should be able to convince the reader (and himself) that the wonders he is describing really can come true...and that gets tricky when you take a good, hard look at the world around you."
- Frederik Pohl

Ball and Hammer Ship  
  Spaceship comprised of two sections connected by a shaft.  

"As you probably saw when you were moving in to come aboard, the Class 4J is ball-and-hammer ship.

" ... A sphere thirty meters in diameter, connected by two slim shafts a hundred meters each in length to a rhomboid-shape that was the ship's thrust unit, some five meters in diameter at it's thickest and looking like a large child's spinning top, pivoted on two wires that clamped it at the middle. This was the "hammer". The ship, proper, was the "ball".

Technovelgy from Dorsai!, by Gordon R. Dickson.
Published by Ace Books in 1960
Additional resources -

Thanks to Gatomon41 for contributing this item.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Dorsai!
  More Ideas and Technology by Gordon R. Dickson
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  Tech news articles related to works by Gordon R. Dickson

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