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"[Science fiction] is the one literary medium left in which we have a free hand. We can do any damn thing we please."
- Alfred Bester
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| The Terror | ||
| An amazing vehicle capable of attaining tremendous speeds - in many different ways. |
| So this machine actually fulfilled a four-fold use! It was at the same time automobile, boat, submarine, and airship. Earth, sea and air,—it could move through all three elements! And with what power! With what speed! Al few instants sufficed to complete its marvelous transformations. The same engine drove it along all its courses! And I had been a witness of its metamorphoses! But that of which I was still ignorant, and which I could perhaps discover, was the source of the energy which drove the machine, and above all, who was the inspired inventor who, after having created it, in every detail, guided it with so much ability and audacity!
... The machine was as I have said spindle-shaped. The bow was sharper than the stern. The body was of aluminium, the wings of a substance whose nature I could not determine. The body rested on four wheels, about two feet in diameter. These had pneumatic tires so thick as to assure ease of movement at any speed. Their spokes spread out like paddles or battledores; and when the "Terror" moved either on or under the water, they must have increased her pace. These wheels were not however, the principal propeller. This consisted of two "Parsons" turbines placed on either side of the keel. Driven with extreme rapidity by the engine, they urged the boat onward in the water by twin screws, and I even questioned if they were not powerful enough to propel the machine through the air. The chief aerial support, however, was that of the great wings, now again in repose, and folded back along the sides. Thus the theory of the "heavier than air" flying machine was employed by the inventor, a system which enabled him to dart through space with a speed probably superior to that of the largest birds. As to the agent which set in action these various mechanisms, I repeat, it was, it could be, no other than electricity. |
| From Master of the World,
by Jules Verne. Published by Pierre-Jules Hetzel in 1904 Additional resources -
|
Verne imagined that it might be possible for a motorized vehicle to travel at the incredible speed of at least 150 miles per hour.
Compare to Robert Heinlein's Camden Speedster from his 1941 novel Methuselah's Children. If you're wondering if there is some other dimension in which a vehicle could move, see the Anacronopete from Enrique Gaspar's eponymous 1887 story.
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