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"...the people dealing with these new technologies will still be derived from the human stock we're familiar with today."
- Charles Stross

Pocket Universe  
  A created, separate space within the normal space of the universe.  

A unique, early use of this term and idea.

He'd evidently put aside the small contrivance I'd last seen him working on, and he'd made a gadget—a diamagnet or whatever it ought to be called—a thing that closed space around itself in a pocket universe when it was turned on—that was extendible.
From Pocket Universes, by Murray Leinster.
Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1946
Additional resources -

A bit of pseudoscience:

So I went over to the table where Santos wrote up his notes and picked up a rubber band and a paper-clip. It was a red rubber band, I remember.

I slipped the paper-clip on it and stretched it between the thumb and forefinger of my hand. Then — feeling very foolish— I made two ink-spots on the rubber. They were a couple of inches from each other, with the paper-clip in between.

The paper-clip represented the copper-glass-wire contrivance, and the ink-spots two arbitrary places on the table. Then I twisted the paper-clip so that it wound up the rubber band about itself. It stretched. The ink-spots approached each other. Presently they touched. Then I let go the paperclip and everything slipped back. They were far apart again, with the clip in between.

That was it, exactly. Einstein has proved that space is elastic. The rubber band was also elastic. When the paper-clip — representing the weird object on the work-table — wrapped the rubber band which represented space about itself, why, presently there wasn’t any rubber band or space between the two dots. But when I released it, everything went back to normal and there was space and a metal object between them.

The diamagnet wrapped space about it- self. It absorbed space. The reason one’s eyes hurt when looking at the place where space had been absorbed was that they tried to focus impossibly. Objects behind the vanished gadget were nearer than objects which weren’t behind it. They hadn’t moved, of course. But a certain amount of space — of distance — had been removed.

This term was used in a spiritual sense in the late nineteenth century.

Compare to the worldcraft bubbles from Philip K Dick's The Trouble With Bubbles (1953).

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Pocket Universes
  More Ideas and Technology by Murray Leinster
  Tech news articles related to Pocket Universes
  Tech news articles related to works by Murray Leinster

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