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"The thing that I'm most interested in at the moment is the so-called Infinite Energy solution - the possibility of finding new ways of tapping into virtually limitless sources of energy."
- Arthur C. Clarke
 |
| Beltway | ||
| A moving sidewalk. |
| As he went down the ramp, the city’s hot, metallic smell greeted him and the deep toned vast growl of its teeming millions. After two days of isolation the terminal’s bustle confused, almost terrified Brad but he found himself on the beltway at the platform’s center and let it carry him down into the dim cool cavern beneath the enormous depot that bestrides mid-Manhattan.
The conveyor leveled out again, slid past the arched openings of the tubeways whose stupendous subsurface network finally had solved the metropolis’ perennial traffic problem. Glowing signs named the farflung metropolitan districts, from Perth Amboy to Peekskill, from Long Island’s South Shore to the Raritan. Behind each a tubecar whined into its terminal trough, disgorged a half-dozen passengers, swallowed a half-dozen others from the head of the waiting line and vanished to be immediately replaced by another. The whole system fanned out from this hub at the Old City’s center. Unless one’s destination was on the same line as his starting point, he transferred here. Long before the beltway had carried Brad to his own tube it had become annoyingly congested... |
| Technovelgy from The Faceless Men,
by Leo Zagat. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1948 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the speed belt from Slaves of Mercury (1932) by Nat Schachner, the slidewalk from Fritz Lieber's 1941 Sanity.and the moving roadway from H.G. Wells' 1899 story When the Sleeper Wakes.
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'What would you do,' Eric asked the robot cabdriver, 'if your wife had turned to stone, your best friend were a toad, and you had lost your job?'
'those suits they wear -- call them 'stillsuits' -- that reclaim the body's own water...'
'Now, except for weight and heat, the same conditions prevail in this chamber as in space.'
'there were so many worms and counterworms loose in the data-net...'
'Now, look, let's start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics...'
'..the synthetic intellects at the Place of Knowledge had far outstripped the minds of men.'
'But after washing and drying clothes had to be smooth - free from fine lines and wrinkles ...'
