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"If we're going to be consistent and advocate freedom of speech we have to advocate freedom of encrypted speech too. The genie is out of the bottle, cryptologically."
- Neal Stephenson
 |
| Sand-Yacht (Land Schooner) | ||
| A vehicle that used wind power upon its sails to move on the land. |
Ballard uses the similarities between the sea and vast desert sands to great effect in this story.
| Every summer during the season at Vermillion Sands, when the town was full of tourists and avant-garde film companies, I would close my office and take one of the beach-houses by the sand-sea five miles away at Ciraquito. Here the long evenings made brilliant sunsets of the sky and desert, crossing the sails of the sand-yachts with hieroglyphic shadows, signatures of all the strange ciphers of the desert sea. During the day I would take my yacht, a Bermuda-rigged sloop, and sail toward the dunes of the open desert. The strong thermals swept me along on a wake of gilded sand. |
| From Cry Hope, Cry Fury!,
by J.G. Ballard. Published by Mercury Publications, Inc. in 1966 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the Sand Ship from Ray Bradbury's 1950 story collection Martian Chronicles.
How old is the tradition of land sailing? I have no idea, but I'm sure it predates Ballard's reference. Here is a picture of some land sailors in the UK enjoying a sail next to the sea.
(Land sailing in the UK)
There is a tradition of land sailing in the United States from the 1960's. The yachts appear to be very similar to ice boats, except that they use wheels instead of blades. I did ice boating in the 1960's; you can really build up some speed on a reach.
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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'A worker replaced by a nubot... had to be compensated.'
'... forcing the energy transfer which allowed him to regrow his lost fingers.'
'The car surged and lifted, clearing its top by a negligible margin.'
Science fiction authors are serious about sleep, too.
'I had explained," said Nessus, "that our civilisation was dying in its own waste heat.'
'Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? - any work a human being does around a house.'
SF writers have thought about this since the 19th century.
