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"It was [H.G. Wells'] adolescent fiction, his imaginative stories, that live forever - and yet are not acknowledged in literature classes as being great literature. So to hell with the academics!"
- Greg Bear
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| Escalladder | ||
| A ladder that you don't have to climb to get to the top. |
I have no idea how this could be made to work. But as a person who has worked on ladders, I can't tell you how handy it would be to just rise to the top without a lot of unwieldy climbing with your hands full of tools.
I don't think this is like a fireman's extending ladder; it's more like the steps just cycle upward when you want them to.
| We rode an escalladder into the nose. |
| Technovelgy from Crashlander,
by Larry Niven. Published by Del Rey in 1994 Additional resources -
|
The creation of this word follows in the tradition of the word escalator, which is a combination of escalade and elevator. Escalade is itself a word meaning "to scale a wall using a ladder."
From the story Neutron Star, collected in the volume Crashlander. Just for the record, the first escalator was installed in 1897 as an amusement park ride in Coney Island. Even today, you can see small children who are excited to "ride the escalator."
We're lucky they don't charge us.
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| Can A Human Land A SpaceX Rocket On Its Tail? |
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'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'
'The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.'
'Hasan always pitched a Gauzy - a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough.'
'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
