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"In 1970 I found little difficulty staying 30 years ahead of the man in the street, and now I find it difficult to stay 18 months ahead of the man on the street."
- Vernor Vinge
 |
| Aero Bus (Flying Bus) | ||
| A flying bus. |
Sometimes referred to as a "flying bus" also called a "street airplane".
| When they next met it was by chance, in a street aeroplane. The aero was full, and they didn't take much notice of each other till something went wrong with the machinery and they were falling street-wards, probably on the top of that unfortunate shop, Swan and Edgar's. In that dizzy moment the Minister swayed towards Kitty and said, "Relax the body and don't protrude the tongue," and then the crash came.
They only grazed Swan and Edgar's, and came down in Piccadilly, amid a crowd of men who scattered like a herd of frightened sheep. No one was much hurt (street aeros were carefully padded and springed, against these catastrophes), but Kitty chanced to strike the back of her head and to be knocked silly. It was only for a moment, and when she recovered consciousness the Minister was bending over her and whispering, "She's killed. She's killed. Oh God." "Not at all," said Kitty, sitting up, very white. "It takes quite a lot more than that." |
| Technovelgy from What Not: A Prophetic Comedy,
by Rose Macaulay. Published by London Constable And Company Ltd. in 1918 Additional resources -
|
Here are the rules:
Then a picture:
"If you hope to achieve safety in a street aero
(1) Do not alight before the aero does.
(2) Do not attempt to jump up into an aero in motion."
"A will be killed because he is standing immediately beneath a descending aero bus.
B will be killed because he and others like him have shaken the nerve of the aviator."
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More Ideas
and Technology from What Not: A Prophetic Comedy
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and Technology by Rose Macaulay
Tech news articles related to What Not: A Prophetic Comedy
Tech news articles related to works by Rose Macaulay
| Futuristic Transit Elevated Bus Never Really Worked |
| Japan Automated Cargo Transport |
| Tesla Electric 'Giga Train' Operational In Germany |
| San Francisco Autobus |
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'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
