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"None of us, no matter what continent or island or ice cap, asked to be born in the first place, and that even somebody as old as I am, which is 80, only just got here."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
 |
| Surface Car | ||
| A specialized vehicle for traveling on a planetary surface. |
Compare this term to the more futuristic "aircar" (which first appeared in The New York Times in 1871!).
| At the landing field itself, under the blazing carbon dioxide lamps, a small man drove up in a surface car, showed an authorization to the guard, passed into the burglar-proof enclosure. |
| Technovelgy from Satellite Five,
by Arthur K. Barnes. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1938 Additional resources -
|
Philip K. Dick uses this, and similar ideas, in Progeny (1954):
It was a good feeling. He had felt it before, during years of business dealings in the “Colonies”, the frontier, the fringe of Terran civilization where the streets were still lit by electric lights and doors opened by hand.
Yet another of the terms like like groundcar, post-crime and static house.
ED DOYLE hurried. He caught a surface car, waved fifty credits in the robot driver’s face, mopped his florid face with a red pocket-handkerchief, unfastened his collar, perspired and licked his lips and swallowed piteously all the way to the hospital...
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from Satellite Five
More Ideas
and Technology by Arthur K. Barnes
Tech news articles related to Satellite Five
Tech news articles related to works by Arthur K. Barnes
| The 'Last Mile' In China Crowded With Delivery Robots |
| Musk Idea Of Cars Talking To Each Other Predicted 70 Years Ago |
| Waymo And Tesla 'Autonomous Cabs' Are Piloted By Remote Drivers |
| Maybe It's Too Soon To Require Autonomous Mode |
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
