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"There was a time when one old eccentric guy with a notebook could do something important to science. Now even the resources of a major university are often not enough."
- Jerry Pournelle
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| Antigravity Plate (Antigravity Raft) | ||
| A thin, circular craft that floats. |
| As the spaceship vanished into the steamy mists of Eristan II, Professor Jamieson drew his gun. He felt physically sick, battered, by the way he had been carried for so many long moments in the furious wind stream of the great ship. But the sense of danger held him tense there in the harness that was attached by metal cables to the now gently swaying antigravity plate above him. With narrowed eyes, he stared up at the ezwal which was peering cautiously down at him over the edge of the antigravity plate.
 ('Co-Operate or Else' by A.E. van Vogt) "You and I, Professor Jamieson, understand each other very well. Of the hundred-odd men on your ship, only you remain alive. Out of all the human race, therefore, only you know that the ezwals of what you call Carson’s Planet are not senseless beasts, but intelligent beings. "I could have stayed on the ship, and so eventually reached home. But rather than take the slightest risk of your escaping the jungle dangers below, I took the desperate chance of jumping on top of this antigravity raft just as you were launching yourself out of the lock." |
| Technovelgy from Co-Operate or Else,
by A.E. van Vogt. Published by Astounding in 1942 Additional resources -
|
Thanks to Winchell Chung (@nyrath) for pointing this out.
Here's another example from The Rull (1948):
The Rull flew out of a clump of trees mounted on an antigravity plate. The surprise of that was so great that it almost succeeded.
(Antigravity Plate from 'The Rull' by AE van Vogt)
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'The greatest problem of all was the elimination of the human element of braking together with its inevitable time lag.'
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
