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"I share the view of Pythagoras that the world is number. The ultimate substrate of the universe is math. There's no way to test that - it's pure metaphysical speculation."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Monoline | ||
| A wind-driven overland transport. |
| Wind blew in sails, and trolley wheels whispered down the monoline - a half inch strand of white Swamp Island cable. From the dome at Swamp City, the line led from spine to spine across three miles of swamp to a rocky headland; it crossed over the rotten bassalt with only six inches to spare, swung in a wide curve to the southeast. At fifty foot intervals, L-brackets mounted to poles supported the line, so designed that the trolleys slid across with only a tremor and slight thud of contact. |
| Technovelgy from Big Planet,
by Jack Vance. Published by Startling Stories in 1952 Additional resources -
|
The wood was shaped and fitted with painstaking precision, and performed as well as any metal machine from the shops of Earth.
Thanks to an anonymous reader for this item.The big wheel was laminated from ten seperate strips, glued, grooved and polished. Spokes of hardened withe supported the central hub, whose bearings were wrought from a greasy black hardwood... Propulsion was achieved by sails, set to a lateen boom... Within reach was a double hand-crank,offset like the pedals of a bicycle; turning the crank would drive the trolley up any slight slope at the end of a long suspension which momentum and the pressure of the sails were unable to negotiate.
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
