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" I think that computers today allow us one last opportunity to provide something like a level playingfield in America."
- William Gibson
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| Ultra-Terrene | ||
| Originating from some world other than Earth. |
The prefix "ultra" comes from the Latin meaning "beyond" and "terrene" again from the Latin for "earth".
This is a very early use of this expression, maybe the first.
| Godfrey Stilton, professor of astronomy at the University of California, also on the committee, might have been chosen as the very antithesis of Gaillard in his views and tendencies. Narrow, dogmatic, skeptical of all that could not be proved by line and rule, scornful of all that lay beyond the bourn of a strait empiricism, he was loath to admit the ultra-terrene origin of the vessel, or even the possibility of organic life on any other world than the earth. |
| Technovelgy from An Adventure in Futurity,
by Clark Ashton Smith. Published by Wonder Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
I'm not sure that other writers every really picked up on ultra-terrene; a lot of Smith's stories use this expression. Here's an excerpt from Master of the Asteroid (1932):
This phrase is entirely different from "contra-terrene" which is sometimes abbreviated as CT or "see-tee", and refers to antimatter. See the article for seetee blinker in Collision Orbit by Jack Williamson.
In later years, with the progress of exploration, more than one of the early derelicts has been descried, following a solitary orbit; and the wrecks of others have been found on ultra-terrene shores.
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'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'
'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
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