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"The way you write science fiction is: you sit down at your writing machine and you open your mind to the first thought that comes through."
- Frederik Pohl

Single Seat Scooter  
  A self-service monocycle.  

At a stand beside the station Gersen selected a self-service cab -- a single seat scooter, gyroscopically balanced, with a transparent canopy. Two SVU in the slot gave him possesion for an hour. Stepping aboard, he drove north through the noisy streets of Sailmaker Beach.
Technovelgy from The Star King, by Jack Vance.
Published by Berkeley in 1964
Additional resources -

You might be interested in an even earlier sf gyroscopically balanced monocycle - the tumblebug from Robert Heinlein's 1940 novella The Roads Must Roll.

For a very cool design prototype version, see EMBRIO Embodies The Tumblebug; don't miss the real-life invention - the Eunicycle Single-Wheel Gyro-Stabilized Scooter.

Also, compare to the one-man car from The Houses of Iszm (1954) by Jack Vance.

Thanks to an anonymous reader for this item.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Star King
  More Ideas and Technology by Jack Vance
  Tech news articles related to The Star King
  Tech news articles related to works by Jack Vance

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