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"The planet's immune system is doing everything it can. The planet's immune system is doing everything it can."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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| Orbiting Penal Colony | ||
| A prison placed in orbit (better than Alcatraz). |
Better than an island prison? Given that space travel is not an easy option for anyone, you would just need to control ship access very carefully. Then, relax; where can they go? Alcatraz was created with a similar idea in mind; put the prison in some sort of void that is difficult to traverse (San Francisco bay). Of course, the ultimate island prison - Australia.
| Up in the orbiting penal colony he slept, unaware of anything. Time had passed, days and weeks and then months and years, and he kept sleeping that long sleep. Suspended in a coffin like plastic cubicle in the great orbiting prison that passed endlessly around the Earth, passing over Greater Los Angeles again and again. |
| Technovelgy from Tekwar,
by William Shatner. Published by Ace/Putnam in 1989 Additional resources -
|
Forced hibernation added to the security; prisoners can't riot or harm each other if they are asleep.
Compare to the asteroid prison from One Against the Legion (1939) by Jack Williamson, the Alcatraz of Space from Reunion on Ganymede (1938) by Clifford Simak, the Moon as prison from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966) by Robert Heinlein, zero-time jail from A World Out of Time (1976) by Larry Niven and Brainlock from Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) by William Gibson.
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'Compounds devised by the biochemists for the rapid building of bone...'
'The car faltered as the external command came to brake...'
'It is about the size and shape of a kitchen stool, gyro-stabilized...'
'The greatest problem of all was the elimination of the human element of braking together with its inevitable time lag.'
'Across the ancient sea floor a dozen tall, blue-sailed Martian sand ships floated, like blue smoke.'
'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
