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"One can see the free software movement as a precusor for a "free hardware" or "free wetware" movement--one that will provide free libraries of designs for biological or nanotechnological products that replicators can be programmed to churn out."
- Charles Stross
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| Belter | ||
| A person who was born and raised in the asteroid belt around Sol. |
As far as I know, Niven coined this handy term. However, the idea of having a word for the people who colonize and work among the asteroids is older (see below).
| Every compartment in the personnel ring opened into the narrow doughnut-shaped hall which ran around the ring's forward rim. Steve pushed himself into the hall, jockeyed to contact the floor, and pushed. From there it was easy going. The floor curved up to meet him, and he proceeded down the hall like a swimming frog. Of the twelve men and women on the Angels's Pencil, Steve was the best at this; for Steve was a Belter, and the others were all flatlands, Earthborn. |
| Technovelgy from The Warriors,
by Larry Niven. Published by Worlds of If in 1966 Additional resources -
|
Here's another insight offered into Belter behavior:
"Sometimes it's almost eerie. You don't move for minutes at a time."
Compare to asterite from Collission Orbit (1942) by Jack Williamson.
"You noticed a habit of mine once. I never make gestures. All Belters have that trait. It's because on a small mining ship you could hit something waving your arms around. Something like the airlock button."
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'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
