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"Tokyo homeless people reiterate the whole nature of living in Tokyo in cardboard boxes, they're only slightly smaller than Tokyo apartments, and they have almost as many consumer goods. It's a nightmare of boxes within boxes."
- William Gibson
 |
| Ether Boat | ||
| A space craft. |
The "ether" referred to here is not a soporific gas, but rather the theorized transmission medium of light and gravity in the absence of all matter - the emptiness of space.
| In the dim interior of an ether boat, two men labored over a pile of rock lumps. They were dressed warmly in sweaters and thick skin-tight trousers. The inner sections of an ether boat were hard to keep warm, especially when the vacuum locks to the outside were used frequently. Every time the lock was opened and the air rushed out, the new air that filled the space when the outer door closed absorbed the intense frigidity of the bare metal wall of the lock chamber. Then, when the inner door to the boat proper was Opened, this frosted air swept in and quickly lowered the average temperature. It was all the electric heaters could do to keep the heat up to just past the freezing point of water. |
| Technovelgy from Murder on the Asteroid,
by Eando Binder. Published by Wonder Stories in 1933 Additional resources -
|
More details:
With a mighty rumble the rear tubes blasted
their song Of power and in a graceful arc the little blunt-nosed, cylindrical ether boat left its roosting
place. Once safely away from the asteroid, Timothy
reset the keyboard for a straight course...
He climbed the short ladder to the pilot room which
was a little one man cell whose roof was glass almost
as tough and strong as steel. He seated himself in
the pilot seat and gazed around with bleary eyes.
From this position the pilot commanded the entire
view on all sides and also upward...
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More Ideas
and Technology from Murder on the Asteroid
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Tech news articles related to works by Eando Binder
| Will Space Stations Have Large Interior Spaces Again? |
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| Chrysalis Generation Ship to Alpha Centauri |
| The First Space Warship For Space Force |
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
