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"I feel like I've been very fortunate in that I've stuck like a burr to the dog-leg of the next generation of nerdism. I've been carried into the XXIth century on Bill Gates' pants-cuff."
- William Gibson
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| Ultra-Terrene | ||
| Originating from some world other than Earth. |
The prefix "ultra" comes from the Latin meaning "beyond" and "terrene" again from the Latin for "earth".
This is a very early use of this expression, maybe the first.
| Godfrey Stilton, professor of astronomy at the University of California, also on the committee, might have been chosen as the very antithesis of Gaillard in his views and tendencies. Narrow, dogmatic, skeptical of all that could not be proved by line and rule, scornful of all that lay beyond the bourn of a strait empiricism, he was loath to admit the ultra-terrene origin of the vessel, or even the possibility of organic life on any other world than the earth. |
| Technovelgy from An Adventure in Futurity,
by Clark Ashton Smith. Published by Wonder Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
I'm not sure that other writers every really picked up on ultra-terrene; a lot of Smith's stories use this expression. Here's an excerpt from Master of the Asteroid (1932):
This phrase is entirely different from "contra-terrene" which is sometimes abbreviated as CT or "see-tee", and refers to antimatter. See the article for seetee blinker in Collision Orbit by Jack Williamson.
In later years, with the progress of exploration, more than one of the early derelicts has been descried, following a solitary orbit; and the wrecks of others have been found on ultra-terrene shores.
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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.'
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'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.'
