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"On-line gaming environments are completely different things... Essentially it's massive global role-playing."
- Peter Watts
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| Space-Tanned | ||
| The characteristic darkening of the men of the spaceways. |
If you find yourself present at a murder on a space ship, you might well be brought before the captain - a space veteran who has spent many hours gazing out the glassite windows of his ship, exposed to the ravening electromagnetic radiations of the spaceways.
| Half an hour later, in the captain's office, the veteran, space-tanned Venusian who was master of the Vulcan faced Rab Crane. |
| From Murder in the Void,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1938 Additional resources -
|
As far as I know, this is the first use of this phrase.
There is another illustrative use in Static, a short story by Kent Casey in May, 1938 Astounding:
(For those who don't know, a "shavetail" is a newly minted second lieutenant, deriving for the word for a newly broken-in pack mule.)
Edmond Hamilton used a variant on this idea in his 1940 story Revolt on the Tenth World:
When they entered the lighted cabin of the craft, which was crowded with piled sacks and metal cases, a wiry old Earthman got up, stretching and yawning. His sparse hair was pure white, his face bronzed and seamed like leather by long exposure in space to unsoftened radiation.
By the time Robert Heinlein uses it in his 1941 novel Methuselah's Children it has lost its hyphen - see space tanned.
On the other hand, maybe Venusians tan more easily than Earthmen...
Young shavetails* - hadn't even got a space tan yet - insisted on being chummy...
Jimmy Crane’s voice was hoarse with passion, his worn, space-bronzed young face quivering...
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| NASA Predicts Radiation Risks |
| Adjust Earth Temp With A Bazillion Solar Sunshades |
| Can China Create Megawatt Solar Power Satellites By 2030? |
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'...most jobs that require a human form are better done by those organic alternatives.'
'So what we're looking for now is... an anti-agathic, an anti-death drug.'
'With the Scarab as big as a beetle, I could make a Scarab as big as a sand grain.'
'The doctor was a line of machines with a conveyor belt running through them.'
