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"Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today -- but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all."
- Isaac Asimov

Boat-Tree  
  A tree, the pods of which can be grown as boats.  

The Lhaiz was a two-masted barque…with purple sails and a commodious cabin. It had been grown on a special boat-tree, one piece even to the main-mast, which originally had been the stem of the pod. The foremast, sprit, booms and rigging were fabricated parts, a situation as irking to the Iszic mind as mechanical motion to an Earth electronics engineer.
Technovelgy from The Houses of Iszm, by Jack Vance.
Published by Better Publications in 1954
Additional resources -

If you are interested in vehicles created from living beings (an obscure category anywhere but on Technovelgy!), take a look at the float-homes from Frank Herbert's 1969 novel Whipping Star and the treeship from Dan Simmon's 1989 novel Hyperion.

Thanks to writer and editor Dominic Brown for contributing this item.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Houses of Iszm
  More Ideas and Technology by Jack Vance
  Tech news articles related to The Houses of Iszm
  Tech news articles related to works by Jack Vance

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