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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Energy Converter | ||
| Massive unit on the sunside of Mercury converts heat into energy, and beams it around the solar system. |
| "Cheap energy; cheapest in the System. Sun power, you know, and on Mercury's Sunside, sunpower is something. That's why the Station was built in the sunlight rather than in the shadow of a mountain. It's really a huge energy converter. The heat is turned into electricity, light mechanical work and what have you; so that energy is supplied and the Station is cooled in a simultaneous process." |
| Technovelgy from Runaround,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Street and Smith in 1942 Additional resources -
|
The energy is beamed around the solar system; this is described more fully in succeeding stories the I, Robot series.
Compare to the Near-Space Solar Energy Collectors from Olaf Stapledon's 1937 novel Star Maker. and the solar energy beam from Masquerade by Clifford Simak.
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Tech news articles related to works by Isaac Asimov
| Hybrid Wind Solar Devices |
| BeamBike Solar Power Canopy For Electric Bikes |
| REALLY Remote Control Excavators |
| Your Solar Electric Paint Is Ready, Larry Niven |
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'...the rocket’s landing-arms automatically unfolded.'
'...points and patches of light... sliding all over their faces in a programmed manner that had been designed to foil facial recognition systems.'
'...the combined Wind-Suncatcher, like a spray of tulips mounted fanwise.'
'I went to the control room where the three other men were manipulating their mechanical men.'
'The low-slung monorail car, straddling its single track, bored through the shadows on a slowly rising course.'
'It was a smooth ovoid floating a few inches from the floor...'
'... he thrust in his charging arm to replenish his store of energy.'
'...the terrible Jovian gravity that made each movement an effort.'
