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"Cyberspace is a metaphor that allows us to grasp this place where since about the time of the second world war we've increasingly done so many of the things that we think of as civilization."
- William Gibson
 |
| Ribbon World | ||
| A planet that presents the same face to its sun has a small habitable area - the ribbon between light and dark. |
| Radole was a small world – and, in military potential, perhaps the weakest of the twenty-seven. That, by the way, was another factor in the logic of the choice. It was a ribbon world – of which the Galaxy boasts a sufficient number, but among which, the inhabited variety is a rarity for the physical requirements are difficult to meet. It was a world, in other words, where the two halves face the monotonous extremes of heat and cold, while the region of possible life is the girdling ribbon of the twilight zone. Such a world invariably sounds uninviting to those who have not tried it, but there exist spots, strategically placed – and Radole City was located in such a one. It spread along the soft slopes of the foothills before the hacked-out mountains that backed it along the rim of the cold hemisphere and held off the frightful ice. The warm, dry air of the sun-half spilled over, and from the mountains was piped the water-and between the two, Radole City became a continuous garden, swimming in the eternal morning of an eternal June. |
| Technovelgy from Foundation and Empire,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Doubleday in 1952 Additional resources -
|
This general idea is also discussed in Too Many Boards!, a 1931 story by Harl Vincent, referring to the planet Mercury and the belief that it is tidally locked like the Moon, presenting one face to the sun:
"Mercury!"
"Larry! It has a terrible climate and is — oh — uncivilized. Besides, its government is unrecognized by
the Tri-planetary Alliance. We'd be exiles in an awful
land where we could never live in peace."
"Honey — listen ! It's just the opposite. I've a very
good friend, Chic Davis, who's captain of the Rocket
III, one of the Tri-planetarian liners. He tells me
Mercury is the finest of all the inhabited bodies. It's
terrifically hot on the side always toward the sun and
frigid on the other, but there's a narrow belt where the
climate is moderate — semi-tropical by earthly standards.
And it's not uncivilized, but highly cultured...
The huge blood-red disc of the sun shone hotly at the
horizon, its almost horizontal rays making of the city
a motley of sweltering high lights and dark shadows.
Rose tinted mists hung low over all, effectually obscuring the heavens above. It was always thus in Luzan,
the sun never leaving the horizon entirely, but circling
it once in every, eighty-eight earth days and alternately
rising to a point that exposed the lower rim of the
enormous disc, then sinking to a point where the topmost edge just peeped through the mists above the
undulating line of demarcation between land and sky.
Apparently, Mercury is tidally locked, but at a 3:2 ratio, so it does not present the same face to the sun.
See also terminator zone from Exiles of the Moon (1931) by Schachner and Zagat.
"...Where else is there to go-?"
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More Ideas
and Technology from Foundation and Empire
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and Technology by Isaac Asimov
Tech news articles related to Foundation and Empire
Tech news articles related to works by Isaac Asimov
Ribbon World-related
news articles:
- Habitable Planet Gliese 581g Is A 'Ribbon World'
- Could Aliens Shelter In 'Terminator Zones' on 'Ribbon World' Exoplanets?
| Solitary Black Hole Wanders In Space |
| Spaceplane From Virgin Atlantic |
| Taikonauts Exercise In China's Tiangong Space Station |
| SpaceX's Starman Tesla Roadster In Space |
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'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
