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"The primary attraction [of writing sf] is the sheer pleasure of creating something from whole cloth."
- Dan Simmons
 |
| Sargasso Asteroid | ||
| A planetoid built from natural rock and the salvaged wreckage of space craft. |
In the twenty-fourth century, only one truly primitive society still exists - The Scientific People. They were descendants of a research team of scientists that had been lost and marooned in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter two hundred years previously.
Gulliver Foyle, last man alive aboard the space ship Nomad, was taken alive by The Scientific People, his ship to be added to their little world.
| He awoke once while he was being carried in triumph on a litter through the natural and artificial passages within the scavenger asteroid. They were constructed of meteor metal, stone and hull plates... The passages led to great halls, storerooms, apartments and homes, all built of salvaged ships cemented into the asteroid.
In rapid succession, Foyle was borne through an ancient Ganymede scow, a Lassell ice borer, a captain's barge, a Calisto heavy cruiser, a twenty-second-century fuel transport with glass tanks still filled with smoky rocket fuel... |
| Technovelgy from The Stars My Destination,
by Alfred Bester. Published by Berkley in 1956 Additional resources -
|
The Scientific people practiced a "barbaric travesty of the scientific method they remembered from their forebears." Their leader greets Foyle by saying
"Quant suff.!" the crowd bellowed.
Compare the Sargasso Asteroid with the wreck-pack from Edmond Hamilton's 1931 story The Sargasso of Space.
As a space station, compare to the brick moon from The Brick Moon (1869) by Edward Everett Hale, the city of space from The Prince of Space (1931) by Jack Williamson, the New Moon Casino from One Against the Legion (1939) by Jack Williamson, the asteroid space station from Misfit (1939) by Robert Heinlein, the Venus Equilateral Relay Station from QRM - Interplanetary (1942) by George O. Smith, Wheelchair from Waldo (1942) by Robert Heinlein, the space transfer station from Between Planets (1951) by Robert Heinlein, the tether space station from Tank Farm Dynamo (1983) by David Brin and the high orbit archipelago from Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) by William Gibson.
"You are the first to arrive alive in fifty years. You are a puissant man. Arrival of the fittest is the doctrine of Holy Darwin. Most scientific."
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Stars My Destination
More Ideas
and Technology by Alfred Bester
Tech news articles related to The Stars My Destination
Tech news articles related to works by Alfred Bester
| 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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'If you're one of those rarities who haven't attended a rocket-polo "carnage", let me tell you it's a colorful affair.'
'They filed clumsily into the battleroom, like children in a swimming pool for the first time, clinging to the handholds along the side.'
'a walking balloon proceeded with long strides of its aluminum legs...'
'There was nowhere on the planet where science and technology could not provide one with a comfortable home...'
'Most men updated their PIP on New Year's Day...'
'...a misshapen, many-tentacled thing about twice the size of a man.'
