Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"You have to budget the number of fuzzy rules you use to control a system. It turns out, you can state the optimality principle in three words: 'patch the bumps.'"
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Self-Propelled Space Suit | ||
| A vacuum suit with a means of propelling itself built in. |
| We had dropped through the roof of a tremendous cavern, its boundaries miles away! Below, straight below us, five hundred feet or more, a circular pool of what seemed white-hot, shining metal blazed. I glimpsed forms moving about its edges, a road bordering it, low-lying buildings. Beyond them fields, green fields. We were falling straight for that white blaze!
 (Death Pool from 'Cavern of the Shining Pool') A hurtling form shot sideward, from above me, blue gas spitting. "Gurd. Your gas-tube! Your gas-tube, Gurd!" Jay's howl shocked me back to thought, to action. I had clean forgotten that this was a self-propelled space suit. My hand-fork flashed to the control button. The death pool jerked away from under me. I thudded hard to the cavern floor, beside the prone figure of my brother. My head rang with the impact, my body felt a mass of bruises, but I was alive! |
| Technovelgy from The Cavern of the Shining Pool,
by Leo Zagat. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1937 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the self-propulsive space suit (illustrated!) from Anthony Gilmore's 1932 story The Bluff of the Hawk and the rocket suit from Flaming Frontier (1934) by Bernard Buley
Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Cavern of the Shining Pool
More Ideas
and Technology by Leo Zagat
Tech news articles related to The Cavern of the Shining Pool
Tech news articles related to works by Leo Zagat
| The New Habitable Zones Include Asimov's Ribbon Worlds |
| Will Space Stations Have Large Interior Spaces Again? |
| Reflect Orbital Offers 'Sunlight on Demand' And Light Pollution |
| Chrysalis Generation Ship to Alpha Centauri |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Science Fiction Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
'...each of them is a neural mapping of the mind of a Tibetan monk who actually lived.'
'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain, through the mediation of the electronic brain in the leg.'
'... every veephone on the continent would display, over and over, two propositions.'
'Completely silent, accurate up to about twenty meters. No recoil...'
'He wore spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.'
