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"I identify with the weak person; this is one reason why my fictional protagonists are essentially antiheroes."
- Philip K. Dick

Sun-Quilt  
  A colorful fabric with a silvered backing used to shield the interior of a living-globe from excessive sunlight.  

Attached to the Beat Cluster by two somewhat larger sealingsilk tunnels and blocking off a good eighth of the inky, star-speckled sky, was the vast trim aluminum bulk of Research Satellite One, dazzling now in the untempered sunlight.

It was mostly this sunlight reflected by the parent satellite, however, that now illuminated Fats Jordan and the other “floaters” of the Beat Cluster. A huge sun-quilt was untidily spread (staying approximately where it was put, like all objects in freefall) against most of the inside of the Big Igloo away from the satellite. The sun-quilt was a patchwork of colors and materials on the inward side, but silvered on the outward side, as turned-over edges and corners showed. Similar “Hollywood Blankets” protected the other igloos from the undesirable heating effects of too much sunlight and, of course, blocked off the sun’s disk from view.

Technovelgy from The Beat Cluster, by Fritz Leiber.
Published by Galaxy in 1961
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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Beat Cluster
  More Ideas and Technology by Fritz Leiber
  Tech news articles related to The Beat Cluster
  Tech news articles related to works by Fritz Leiber

Sun-Quilt-related news articles:
  - Space Station Shutters

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