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"The planet's immune system is doing everything it can. The planet's immune system is doing everything it can."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
 |
| Can City | ||
| A cylindrical space habitat. |
This item appears mostly as a single term; it is not defined by the author. Science fiction fans, however, will recognize the reference to large cylindrical space habitats that are spun about their axes to create the semblance of gravity on the inner wall of the structure.
| Kassad could hear the squid shaking and beginning to break up as he hung on a pivot ring and all but accepted the fact that the Ousters had not wasted money or space on such low-probability rescue devices for their squids. Why should they? Their lifetimes were spent in the darkness between star systems; their concept of an atmosphere was the eight-klick pressurized tube of a can city. |
| Technovelgy from Hyperion,
by Dan Simmons. Published by Doubleday in 1989 Additional resources -
|
The canonical example of this kind of habitat is Rama, from Arthur C. Clarke's novel of the same name. The earliest example of this that I can find is city of space, from a Jack Williamson story in 1931.
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'It hurtled on down with inconceivable speed until it was visible as thousands of tiny robot planes...'
'Then she looked up with a smile and moved closer to the camera.'
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'... another corner of his mind began to think about the shields.'
'Michel Ardan, as a Frenchman, was declared chief cook, an important function, which raised no rival.'
