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"Cyberpunk worked when the Internet was in its hand-wound crystal radio phase, when you had to be a sort of hobbyist to do e-mail, and it all had a very steep learning curve. Those days are over."
- William Gibson
 |
| Multigyros | ||
| Allows known stable movement in four dimensions, thus making space travel possible. |
| FLANKED by the two guards, Donald followed Danvril along the narrow passage between the exterior isochromin glass and the multigyros set in the very bottom of the spaceship, under a dome that rose between the cargo that was stacked fore and aft.
These consisted of a dozen top-like mechanisms, set at various angles, imparting what had been the last difficulty to overcome in interplanetary navigation, stability in absolute space, viewed as a four-dimensional continuum. |
| Technovelgy from Revolt on Inferno,
by Victor Rousseau. Published by Miracle Science and Fantasy Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
Does the ship still have a captain?
Inasmuch as the complete course of the space-ship had been set by the experts before she left Earth, and the multigyros maintained it without the slightest variation, old Croft’s task was largely a routine one. Nevertheless, upon the bridge, he seemed to typify those old traditions of the sea, which had come down as legends through the years.
Navigation is carefully calculated:
Donald nodded. Matters had suddenly assumed a serious aspect. Jupiter’s giant bulk was as big a bugbear to space-travel as any shoals or rocks had been to sea-ships in earlier centuries.
“When do we start?” Donald asked.
“Exactly five-thousandths of a second after 23, which means in four hours’ time. But when I say there is no navigating, I mean, of course, outside Earth’s atmosphere. It’s Cohaine’s job to see we land at Chicago instead of falling into the Atlantic.”
On the bridge stood Captain Crofts, a sturdy old man whose history went back almost to the first interplanetary voyage, apart from the first fugitive rocket-journeys to the moon.
“We don’t navigate. The course and return course are both plotted from Earth. The calculations must be exact to the millionth part of a second. Otherwise we might collide with our Moon, or, worse yet, fall into Jupiter.”
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| Capturing Asteroids With Nets |
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'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
