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"SF looks towards an imaginary future, while fantasy, by and large, looks towards an imaginary past."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Fold Box | ||
| A chest that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. |
In the novel, an ordinary guy becomes a hero, thanks to Star, Queen of the Universes, and Rufo, her "servant."
| Rufo's baggage turned out to be a little black box about the size and shape of a portable typewriter. He
opened it.
And opened it again. And kept on opening it--And kept right on unfolding its sides and letting them down until the durn thing was the size of a small moving van and even more packed. Since I was nicknamed "Truthful James" as soon as I learned to talk and am widely known to have won the hatchet every February 22nd all through school, you must now conclude that I was the victim of an illusion caused by hypnosis and/or drugs. Me, I'm not sure. Anyone who has studied math knows that the inside does not have to be smaller than the outside, in theory, and anyone who has had the doubtful privilege of seeing a fat woman get in or out of a tight girdle knows that this is true in practice, too. Rufo's baggage just carried the principle further. |
| Technovelgy from Glory Road,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Gregg Press in 1963 Additional resources -
|
The box had other unlikely (physically impossible in this world) characteristics as well:
Rufo's little black box was now rigged as a knapsack and I did not stop to wonder how he could carry a couple of tons on his shoulders. An antigrav device like Buck Rogers, maybe. Chinese coolie blood. Black magic. Hell, that teakwood chest alone could not have fitted into that backpack by a factor of 30 to I, not to mention the arsenal and assorted oddments.
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'Tell me your torments,' the Padre said, in an elderly voice marked with compassion.
'...a slender-legged tripod surmounted by a spherical body no larger than a football.'
'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'
'The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.'
'Hasan always pitched a Gauzy - a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough.'
