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"Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Orbital Terminus | ||
| An airport in space; a terminal for low earth orbit flights. |
The obvious model for Gibson's terminus is the retro cool spaceport used in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
| Japan Air's orbital terminus was a white toroid studded
with domes and ringed with the dark-rimmed oval openings
of docking bays. The terminal above Marly's g-web-though
above had temporarily lost its usual meaning displayed an
exquisitely drafted animation of the torus in rotation, while a
series of voices in seven languages announced that the
passengers on board JAL's Shuttle 580, Orly Terminus I,
would be taxied to the terminal at the earliest opportunity.
JAL offered apologies for the delay, which was due to routine
repairs underway in seven of the twelve bays.
The interior of the JAL toroid was so bland, so unremarka- ble, so utterly like any crowded airport, that she felt like laughing. There was the same scent of perfume, human tension, and heavily conditioned air, and the same background hum of conversation. The point-eight gravity would have made it easier to carry a suitcase, but she only had her black purse. Now she took her tickets from one of its zippered inner pockets and checked the number of her connecting shuttle against the columns of numbers arrayed on the nearest wall screen. |
| Technovelgy from Count Zero,
by William Gibson. Published by Arbor House in 1986 Additional resources -
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'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
