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"It was my preferred entertainment when I was a kid, so when I set out to be a writer, it was perfectly natural that I should write the sort of stories that I used to enjoy reading."
- John Brunner
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| Belter | ||
| A person who was born and raised in the asteroid belt around Sol. |
As far as I know, Niven coined this handy term. However, the idea of having a word for the people who colonize and work among the asteroids is older (see below).
| Every compartment in the personnel ring opened into the narrow doughnut-shaped hall which ran around the ring's forward rim. Steve pushed himself into the hall, jockeyed to contact the floor, and pushed. From there it was easy going. The floor curved up to meet him, and he proceeded down the hall like a swimming frog. Of the twelve men and women on the Angels's Pencil, Steve was the best at this; for Steve was a Belter, and the others were all flatlands, Earthborn. |
| Technovelgy from The Warriors,
by Larry Niven. Published by Worlds of If in 1966 Additional resources -
|
Here's another insight offered into Belter behavior:
"Sometimes it's almost eerie. You don't move for minutes at a time."
Compare to asterite from Collission Orbit (1942) by Jack Williamson.
"You noticed a habit of mine once. I never make gestures. All Belters have that trait. It's because on a small mining ship you could hit something waving your arms around. Something like the airlock button."
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'Sapiro’s computer just kept dialing at random, hanging up on humans, until it got a fellow computer of the same type as itself.'
'I request that you feed the correlation between those dots and the levers of the panel into my memory banks.'
'... all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'If you surf over a bump, the spokes contract to roll over it.'
'He wrote on it, using the pointed fingernail of his right forefinger...'
