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"...a few centuries of coherent humanist thought, set against a million odd years of evolved killer ape tendency. No-one's going to give you very good odds on humanism, are they?"
- Richard Morgan
 |
| Flying Saucer | ||
| Spacecraft flown by the androgynes of Titan - under control of the Puppetmasters. |
This was how the Puppetmasters of the novel arrived - using the ships of a tiny race from Titan, one of the moons of Saturn.
| There was fighting going on above and all around us, but there was a curious calm near the saucer itself.
The outlander ship loomed up almost over us, not fifty yards away... It was a discus in shape and of great size; it was tilled slightly toward us, for it had grounded partly on one of the magnificent high-stilted old mansions which line that coast. The ship's canted attitude let us see that the upper surface and what was surely its airlock-a metal hemisphere, a dozen feet across, at the main axis of the ship, where the hub would have been had it been a wheel. This hemisphere was lifted straight out or up from the body of the ship some six or eight feet. I could not see what held it out from the hull but I assumed that there must be a central shaft or piston; it came out like a poppet valve. It was easy to see why the masters of the saucer had not closed up again and taken off from there; the airlock was fouled, held open by a "mud turtle", one of those little amphibious tanks which are at home on the bottom of a harbor or crawling up onto a beach... |
| Technovelgy from The Puppet Masters,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Doubleday in 1951 Additional resources -
|
The term itself was created in 1947, in response to real-world sightings of unidentified objects.
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Flying Saucer-related
news articles:
- Russian Flying Saucers Coming to USA
| Europa Clipper Plate Carries A Special Message |
| China Wants To Build Mega Space Ships |
| Dream Of Building Your Own Rocket? |
| Used Dragon Cargo Spacecraft Will Fly Again |
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
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'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
