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"...the elements of cyberpunk have dissolved into the whole SF genre, so it’s hard to find anyone writing who doesn’t owe serious debts to Gibson and his crew."
- Richard Morgan
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| Space Tramp | ||
| An old, slow spacecraft. |
| "...The High Command hasn't announced what ship it is, but it must be a fast one - not a space tramp." |
| Technovelgy from The Invisible World,
by Ed Earl Repp. Published by Amazing Stories in 1940 Additional resources -
|
By analogy to "tramp steamer", referring to a ship without fixed schedule or scheduled ports of call. This kind of ship was also called an "ocean tramp".
Another example of the same expression, from They Never Came Back (1941) by Fritz Leiber:
Bart Harlan, standing on the cat-walk that circled the upper rim of the docking-cradle, did not immediately answer the shouted question. He clung to the thin hand rail, bracing himself against the sheets of rain which drove across the almost deserted landing field, and stared wearily down into the shadowy interior of the cradle. It was about the grubbiest looking space-tramp he’d ever seen. Its weblike outer skin of molybdo-barium meteorite cushionings was tarnished black, except where recent gouges revealed shining metal. One boarding grapple was badly bent; it would not quite fold back into the housing, and stuck out like a broken finger. The iso-quartz space ports showed no lights; they peered like dead eyes from behind the molybdo-barium interweave. A trip to the repair cradles was certainly in order; no space-ship inspector would ever 0. K. a tramp like that, unless the bribe was pretty steep.
HEY, YOU! What’s your business?”
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| 'If Anyone Is Watching Earth...' |
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| The United States Space Academy Is Official |
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'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'
'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
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