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"I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled 'Science Fiction' and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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| Fatline | ||
| A communications technology that provides immediate communication between star systems; faster-than-light communication. |
The fatline is an artifact served up to humanity by The Core, a group of artificial intelligences that have effectively divorced themselves from human control. The term derives from the common acronym for faster-than-light, FTL.
| Urgent fatline messages from Tau Ceti Center demanded that the ranking officer abord the orbiting HS Denieve settle the situation on Qom-Riyadh, free all hostages and depose the New Prophet ... without resorting to the use of nuclear weapons within the planet's atmosphere. |
| Technovelgy from Hyperion,
by Dan Simmons. Published by Doubleday in 1989 Additional resources -
|
I've included the reference here because I like the word and it's derivation; other earlier examples of faster-than-light communication include the cosmic teletype from Carl Jacobi's Cosmic Teletype (1957), ansible from Rocannon's World by Ursula LeGuin, ultrawave relay from the Foundation stories by Isaac Asimov and taprisiots from Whipping Star by Frank Herbert.
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'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
'Gaines and Harvey mounted tumblebugs, and kept abreast of the Cadet Captain...'
Accompanied by a small selection of similar ideas from science fiction.
'...war-balloons, or, as it would be more correct to call them, navigable aerostats.'
