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" I try to sit down at the typewriter four times a day, even if it's only five minutes, and write three sentences. And if I feel like going on, or if something turns me on I'll just keep writing till I'm written out."
- Roger Zelazny

Starlight Sail (Light Sail)  
  A light sail capable of sailing between solar systems.  

I don't know of an earlier reference to light sails in science fiction.

"Now this is the way that the foresail works. That sail will be twenty thousand miles at the wide part. It tapers down and the total length will be just under eighty-thousand miles. It will be retracted or extended by small servo-robots. The servo-robots are radio-controlled."
Technovelgy from The Lady Who Sailed The Soul, by Cordwainer Smith.
Published by Galaxy in 1960
Additional resources -

The pilot lived in a tiny control room; flights lasted an average of forty years. The ship had a string of thousands of adiabatic pods, each containing a passenger.

See the longer discussion of light sails (solar sails) from Jack Vance's Sail 25.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Lady Who Sailed The Soul
  More Ideas and Technology by Cordwainer Smith
  Tech news articles related to The Lady Who Sailed The Soul
  Tech news articles related to works by Cordwainer Smith

Starlight Sail (Light Sail)-related news articles:
  - Cosmos 1 Sets Solar Sail - Update
  - NanoSail-D Solar Wind-Rider
  - Ikaros Solar Sail Craft Photo Of Venus
  - Bigrating Laser Beam-Riding Light Sail Is Self-Correcting

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Spaceplane From Virgin Atlantic
Taikonauts Exercise In China's Tiangong Space Station
SpaceX's Starman Tesla Roadster In Space
Warp Drive Tech Back On The Menu

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