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"We [science fiction writers] always wanted to believe in "private sector" space -- hucksters make better characters than a government does."
- Larry Niven
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| Robot Vending Machine | ||
| Machinery displaces news boys selling papers on street corners. |
| Mr.
WILLIAM WINDSOR, a hard- MR.headed, grim-visaged newspaperman of forty, stood nonchalantly on the moving walk that swept him briskly down Fifth Avenue. He smiled with pardonable pride as he listened to the raucous magnetic speakers shouting out the phrases that drew excited mobs to the robot vending machines which sold the yet damp news strips of printed shorthand...
Bill stepped off the moving sidewalk by the corner vending machine, dropped a coin in the slot, and received a copy of the damp shorthand strip delivered fresh from the presses by magnetic tube. He read his story, standing in a busy street that rustled quietly with the whir of moving walks and the barely audible drone of the thousands of electrically driven heliocars which spun smoothly along on rubber-tired wheels, or easily lifted themselves to skimming flight upon whirling helicopters. |
| Technovelgy from The Prince of Space,
by Jack Williamson. Published by Amazing Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the homotropic news vending machine from The Game Players of Titan (1963) by Philip K. Dick.
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Tech news articles related to The Prince of Space
Tech news articles related to works by Jack Williamson
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Science Fiction
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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.'
