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"Science and science fiction, how do you even distinguish the two?"
- Jerry Pournelle

Great Pain of Space  
  A kind of fatal space sickness afflicting humans who travel in space.  

An inherent problem with space travel.

With men trying to work and cursing him for a Scanner while he, professional zeal aroused, fought to do his job and keep them alive in the Great Pain of Space...

What could any Other know of the Up-and-Out? What Other could look at the biting acid beauty of the stars in open space? What could they tell of the Great Pain, which started quietly in the marrow, like an ache, and proceeded by the fatigue and nausea of each separate nerve cell, brain cell, touchpoint in the body, until life itself became a terrible aching hunger for silence and for death?

Technovelgy from Scanners Live in Vain, by Cordwainer Smith.
Published by Fantasy Publishing Co. Inc. in 1950
Additional resources -

Compare to space-sick from Ralph 124c 41+ (1911) by Hugo Gernsback, space madness from A Daring Trip to Mars (1931) by Max Valier, space fear from SOS in Space (1937) by Eando Binder, moon-terror from Star of Dreams (1941) by Jack Williamson, gravitation paralysis from The World With A Thousand Moons (1942) by Edmond Hamilton, Space Scurvy (Kenoalgia) from Sacred Martian Pig (1949) by Margaret Saint Clair, space phobia from Let 'em Breathe Space! (1953) by Lester del Rey and desubstantiation effect from Death's End (2010) by Cixin Liu.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Scanners Live in Vain
  More Ideas and Technology by Cordwainer Smith
  Tech news articles related to Scanners Live in Vain
  Tech news articles related to works by Cordwainer Smith

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