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"Why does a creative person create? It's a type of compulsion. I like to explore new ideas."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Flight Stick | ||
| A personal flying vehicle, stripped down to the basics. |
Hanville Svetz was a time traveler, from some seven hundred years into our future, sent back on a peculiar mission. To find a horse.
| The world turned grey. Svetz caught a wall clamp to stop himself from falling...
When his head cleared, he turned to where other equipment was clamped to a wall. The flight stick was a lift-field generator and power source built into five feet of pole, with a control ring at one end, a brush discharge at the other, and a bucket seat and seat belt in the middle. Compact even for Svetz's age, the flight stick was spin-off from the spaceflight industries. But it still weighed thirty pounds with the motor off... He straddled the flight stick and twisted the control knob on the fore end. The stick lifted under him, and he wriggled into place on the bucket seat. He twisted the knob further. He drifted upward like a toy balloon. |
| From The Flight of the Horse,
by Larry Niven. Published by Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1969 Additional resources -
|
For a wind-shield, it had a very cool paraboloid force-field.
Well-read fans will have no trouble recognizing the broomstick speedster, from Robert Heinlein's 1942 classic Waldo.
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'The world ... is drenched in unfamiliar information all the way to the horizon.'
'He saw one hiss by him as he rounded the corner, trailing a short whip antenna...'
'It may be organic damage. It may be permanent. Time'll tell, and only after you are off Substance D for a long while.'
It's the polite thing to do, and has been the polite thing to do for about four generations.
