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"In science fiction one can say a great many things that are unpalatable, … because it's expressed as science fiction you can slip it past their defenses."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Magnetic Anchor | ||
| A means of affixing an anchor point on a spacecraft hull. |
| ...a heavy magnetic anchor leaped from its catapult toward the passing ship, dragging its cable. It struck the liner's hull, clung fast. Like a silver fish, the Bellatrix plunged and darted for a time upon the line. But the smaller station held her adroitly, giving her opportunity neither to ram nor to break the cable. And steadily the ships were drawn together as the cable was wound upon its drum. The purple, fluorescent blast from the liner's motors was at last shut off. The two ships drifted side by side, at the cable's ends — hurtling down toward the black, red-flecked disk of the Dead Star... Five minutes later, the eleven of us were dragging ourselves across between the ships in clumsy, inflated suits, laden with weapons. As weird a journey as can be imagined, it was. Eleven swollen giants, climbing by their hands along a cable between two vessels in the void. For background, the flaming streamers of the Great Nebula, and the malign black disk of the Dead Star. |
| Technovelgy from Dead Star Station,
by Jack Williamson. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1933 Additional resources -
|
Here's another quote from The Saga of Pelican West (1937) by Eric Frank Russell:
“There’s little to tell.” She shrugged
and gazed pensively into the distance.
“I was official hostess on board the Ongortolla. When we were five days off
Great Plains, our ship was pirated by
Jason Kemp and his gang of toughs,
and -“
“Kemp, eh?” he interrupted.
“Yes. He swept alongside us,
clamped on with magnetic anchors,
forced the air lock and placed a prize
crew aboard. The Ongortolla hung in
space until Mars had swung clear, then
made for the asteroid belt.”
Compare to the magnetic grapple-beams from Solar Lottery (1955) by Philip K. Dick and the magnapoon from Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson.
“NOW tell me what happened,” Pelican encouraged.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Dead Star Station
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and Technology by Jack Williamson
Tech news articles related to Dead Star Station
Tech news articles related to works by Jack Williamson
| Tumblin' Tumbleweed Rovers To Eplore Mars |
| Tentacled Robot Captures Space Debris |
| Reflect Orbital Sunlight On Demand |
| Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space |
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'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'
'The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe- like independence.'
'...then back to their work, though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators.'
