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"SF looks towards an imaginary future, while fantasy, by and large, looks towards an imaginary past."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| Vacuum Cylinder | ||
| Traveling first class, but like mail, in a tube system. |
This might be a good description of what it will be like to travel in the Hyperloop, if they ever build one.
| We've got to get into his office secretly, by
tte vacuum cylinders. We're to
meet a man from his office at the
Eighth Postal switch-station."
The girls were both in gray, with long dark capes. We took the public monorail down into the mid-Manhattan section under the city roof of the business district, and into the Eighth Postal switch-station where the sleek bronze cylinders came tumbling out of the vacuum portes to be rerouted and dispatched again, A man was on the lookout for us. "Daniel Dean and party?" "Yes," said Snap. "We were ordered here..." We were put into one of the oversize mail cylinders, routed through the tubes like sacks of recorded letters; and in ten minutes, with a thump that knocked the breath from all of us, we were in the switch-rack of Halsey's outer office. |
| Technovelgy from Wandl, The Invader,
by Ray Cummings. Published by Astounding Stories in 1932 Additional resources -
|
A bit more:
The cylinder-slide opened.
Compare to the vacutubes and the bounce tubes both by Heinlein.
In the service room a passenger
cylinder was waiting. Our guide
entered it with us. At the switch-station we had our breath knocked
out with the bumping, but the
cylinder remained sealed. And after
another ten minutes in the vacuum
tube, we reached our unknown destination.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Wandl, The Invader
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| San Francisco Autobus |
| Volvo's Autonomous Truck |
| Eviation Alice Electric Plane First Flight |
| Robotaxi By Cruise Premieres in Austin, Texas |
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Science Fiction
Timeline
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
