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"I love that computer science has made mathematics into something like an experimental science. I was never all that good at proving things, but I love doing computer experiments."
- Rudy Rucker
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| Lunar Web | ||
| The moon ensnared by cobwebs. |
A fascinating (and fantastic!) visualization of the long afternoon of our Earth.
| The traverser, a gross vegetable-equivalent of a spider, was descending to the Tips…
The traverser was descending slowly, a great bladder with legs and jaws, fibery hair covering most of its bulk… It was like a god, with the powers of a god. It came down on a cable, floated nimbly down the strand trailing up into the sky. As far as could be seen, cables slanted up from the jungle, pointing like slender, drooping fingers to heaven… They all trailed up in the same direction, toward a floating silver half-globe, remote and cool, but clearly visible even in the glare of eternal sunshine… Unmoving, steady, the half-moon remained always in the same sector of the sky. |
| Technovelgy from Hothouse,
by Brian Aldiss. Published by Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1962 Additional resources -
|
Read the discussion about the space elevator, which has a rich history before and after the idea's treatment by sf writers.
This flight of fancy on the part of Aldiss hearkens back to the earliest stirrings of science fiction. Take a look at the entry for weightlessness and the journey of the Gansas to the moon in Francis Godwin's 1638 novel The Man in the Moone.
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and Technology from Hothouse
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Tech news articles related to works by Brian Aldiss
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| Taikonauts Exercise In China's Tiangong Space Station |
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
