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"The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer. Day after month after year after story after book."
- Harlan Ellison
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| Mining Worm (Organic) | ||
| Genetically altered earthworm created just for mining. |
Mount Lookitthat had valuable ores to mine, and the colonists had lots of little helpers for the job of mining. Just don't let one bite you.
| A mining worm is five inches long and a quarter inch in diameter, mutated from an earthworm. Its grinding orifice is rimmed with little diamond teeth. It ingests metal ores for pleasure, but for food it has to be supplied with blocks of synthetic stuff which is different for each breed of worm - and there's a breed for every metal... What breaks down the ores is a bacterium in the worm's stomach. Then the worm drops metal grains around it's food block, and we sweep them up. |
| Technovelgy from A Gift From Earth,
by Larry Niven. Published by Del Rey in 1968 Additional resources -
|
These little guys are reminiscent of the Hortas of Janus VI, who were also industrious mining creatures (from the orignial 1967 Star Trek episode Devil in the Dark, written by Gene Coon).
The idea of a mining worm predates Niven's work; see the mining worm (robot) from Love Among the Robots by Emmett McDowell, published in 1946.
As an aside, there appears to be a precursor to the idea of Mount Lookitthat, the highest mountain plateau in the universe (or at least in Larry Niven's Known Space). Here's a quote from The Rull (1948) by AE van Vogt:
Mount Monolith, discovered at the same time as the planet, two years before, had been named in the first words spoken about it. “Look at that monolith down there!” On a level plain that column stood, and reared up precipitously to a height of eight thousand two hundred feet. The most majestic pillar in the known universe, it easily qualified as one of the hundred natural wonders of the galaxy.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from A Gift From Earth
More Ideas
and Technology by Larry Niven
Tech news articles related to A Gift From Earth
Tech news articles related to works by Larry Niven
Mining Worm (Organic)-related
news articles:
- Deep Sea Mining Tube Worms
- Evolved Earthworms To Clean Up Toxic Metals
- Earthworms Absorb Copper Nanomaterials From Soil
| Black Fungus Blocks Radiation |
| Lunar Biorepository Proposed For Cryo-Preservation Of Earth Species |
| Let's Make Slaver Sunflowers! Engineering Plants To Reflect Light |
| Machete-Wielding Philodendron Isn't Going To Take It Anymore |
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'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
'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.'
'... folios and tapes and playable discs of platinum alloy.'
'... another corner of his mind began to think about the shields.'
