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"In 1977, it took about eight months for a slightly faster more refined mechanism to put punk in the window of Holt Renfrew. It's gotten faster ever since."
- William Gibson
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| Beam Car | ||
| A vehicle like an elevator car, but which travels on a radio and magnetic beam, from the surface of a planet up to a satellite. |
| The interior of the projectilelike vehicle was padded thickly and was provided with oxygen apparatus. But no propelling mechanism was in evidence. Jor Therol, following them inside, closed and made airtight the door, then spoke softly as if in answer to the objections which had presented themselves in the minds of his guests. “Phobos,” he said, “is all you say —on the surface. We go not to the surface, however, but to the interior of the body, where is to be found the city of Scarta. This car in which we ride is driven through the tube by magnetic forces and thence over a beam of radio impulses to the receiving tube at Scarta. Hold fast now, my friends. We leave.”
 ('Lost City of Mars' by Harl Vincent) The car flung upward with a violence that flattened them all to the cushions. The pressure was unbearable as it accelerated to a terrific velocity. Almost instantly the small compartment became insufferable from the heat of atmospheric friction. Coler panted, tried to raise his head, but could not move it. His eyes burned in their sockets. Something snapped in his brain. |
| Technovelgy from Lost City of Mars,
by Harl Vincent. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1934 Additional resources -
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'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
