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"If I can make you see the world the way I see it, then you will automatically think the way I think."
- Philip K. Dick
 |
| Flight Stick | ||
| A personal flying vehicle, stripped down to the basics. |
Hanville Svetz was a time traveler, from some seven hundred years into our future, sent back on a peculiar mission. To find a horse.
| The world turned grey. Svetz caught a wall clamp to stop himself from falling...
When his head cleared, he turned to where other equipment was clamped to a wall. The flight stick was a lift-field generator and power source built into five feet of pole, with a control ring at one end, a brush discharge at the other, and a bucket seat and seat belt in the middle. Compact even for Svetz's age, the flight stick was spin-off from the spaceflight industries. But it still weighed thirty pounds with the motor off... He straddled the flight stick and twisted the control knob on the fore end. The stick lifted under him, and he wriggled into place on the bucket seat. He twisted the knob further. He drifted upward like a toy balloon. |
| Technovelgy from The Flight of the Horse,
by Larry Niven. Published by Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1969 Additional resources -
|
For a wind-shield, it had a very cool paraboloid force-field.
Well-read fans will have no trouble recognizing the broomstick speedster, from Robert Heinlein's 1942 classic Waldo.
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Tech news articles related to works by Larry Niven
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| CyberCab - Tesla Renames The Robotaxi |
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'What would you do,' Eric asked the robot cabdriver, 'if your wife had turned to stone, your best friend were a toad, and you had lost your job?'
'those suits they wear -- call them 'stillsuits' -- that reclaim the body's own water...'
'Now, except for weight and heat, the same conditions prevail in this chamber as in space.'
'there were so many worms and counterworms loose in the data-net...'
'Now, look, let's start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics...'
'..the synthetic intellects at the Place of Knowledge had far outstripped the minds of men.'
'But after washing and drying clothes had to be smooth - free from fine lines and wrinkles ...'
