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"The planet's immune system is doing everything it can. The planet's immune system is doing everything it can."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
 |
| Groundcar (or Ground Car) | ||
| A non-skimming, non-flying vehicle. |
One of the ways a writer can emphasize the extraordinary advances of a culture is to use verbiage to suggest that current technology is old-fashioned.
| I will return in three hours, as well before sunset the wind makes it impossible to get even a ground car into the port. |
| Technovelgy from Galactic Patrol,
by E.E. 'Doc' Smith. Published by Street and Smith in 1937 Additional resources -
|
Robert Heinlein used it in Methuselah's Children in 1941:
Isaac Asimov used it in Bridle and Saddle (Foundation) in 1942 in Astounding Science Fiction:
I like words like this; compare to static house or inert-wear or flat photo or tru-mem systems or post-crime punishment or tree-grown wood or manual closet or meat person or dirt-farming.
She dropped down the lift tube from Ventura's apartment, claimed her speedy ground car from the attending automaton in the basement and set the control combination for North Shore.
Lee was at the window and his voice broke in on Hardin's reverie. "They've come," he said, "in a last-model ground car, the young pups."
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Galactic Patrol
More Ideas
and Technology by E.E. 'Doc' Smith
Tech news articles related to Galactic Patrol
Tech news articles related to works by E.E. 'Doc' Smith
| Leader-Follower Autonomous Vehicle Technology |
| Inmotion Electric Unicycle In Combat |
| Congress Considers Automatic Emergency Braking, One Hundred Years Too Late |
| The 'Last Mile' In China Crowded With Delivery Robots |
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'Sapiro’s computer just kept dialing at random, hanging up on humans, until it got a fellow computer of the same type as itself.'
'I request that you feed the correlation between those dots and the levers of the panel into my memory banks.'
'... all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'If you surf over a bump, the spokes contract to roll over it.'
'He wrote on it, using the pointed fingernail of his right forefinger...'
