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" I sometimes suspect that we're seeing something in the Internet as significant as the birth of cities. It's really something new, it's a new kind of civilization."
- William Gibson
 |
| Slidewalk | ||
| A moving sidewalk; a conveyor belt for people. |
This term refers to a way of moving large numbers of people over a relatively short distance (over flat surface).
| He had stepped on to the corridor slidewalk and had coasted halfway to the elevator before he realized that Phy had followed him and was plucking timidly at his sleeve. |
| Technovelgy from Sanity,
by Fritz Leiber. Published by Astounding S-F in 1944 Additional resources -
|
The slidewalk is also a Heinlein favorite; you'll find references in his 1947 story It's Great to be Back!, his 1948 story Gentlemen, Be Seated and his 1948 novel Space Cadet:
It was a dull trip-climb on a scooter, ride down a completely featureless tunnel, climb off and go
through an airlock, get on another scooter and do it all over again. Mr. Knowles filled in with sales talk.
"This is temporary," he explained. "When we get the second tunnel dug, we'll cross-connect, take out the
airlocks, put a northbound slidewalk in this one, a southbound slidewalk in the other one, and you'll
make the trip in less than three minutes. Just like Luna City-or Manhattan."
Don left the booth and looked around for a cab stand. The station seemed more jammed than ever, with uniforms much in evidence, not only those of pilots and other ship personnel but military uniforms of many corps-and always the ubiquitous security police. Don fought his way through the crowd, down a ramp, along a slidewalk tunnel, and finally found what he wanted. There was a queue waiting for cabs; he joined it.
Space Cadet
The logical extension of this idea is a slidewalk that has been expanded to the size of an interstate highway; see rolling roads, from Heinlein's 1940 novelette The Roads Must Roll.
Of course, even earlier were the demonstration-level sliding walkways shown at the 1893 Chicago Exposition and the 1900 Paris Exposition. Here is a kinetoscope of the moving sidewalk from the 1900 Paris Exposition made by Thomas Edison.
They went on up to the subsurface level and took the crosstown slidewalk out to the rocket port. The slidewalk tunnel broke the surface at one point, becoming a pressurized shed; a view window on the west looked out on the surface of the Moon—and, beyond the hills, the Earth.
It's Great to be Back!
Gentlemen, Be Seated
Compare to the speed belt from Slaves of Mercury (1932) by Nat Schachner and the beltway from The Faceless Men (1948) by Leo Zagat.
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Tech news articles related to works by Fritz Leiber
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| CORLEO Robotic Horse Concept Looks Ready To Ride |
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'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'
'Not like me. A T-1000, advanced prototype. A mimetic poly-alloy. Liquid metal.'
'It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
'The massive feet working the pedals, arms and hands flashing and glinting...'
'There were cubic miles of it, and it glistened like a silvery Christmas tree...'
'Jason had been guiding the caravan of cars as usual...'
"The robot solemnly hit a ball against the wall, picked it up and teed it, hit it again, over and again...'
'There was a wall ahead... It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
