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"Everything starts as somebody's daydream. And, when you're daydreaming, it is science fiction. It's when you start work out how you put it together, true science fiction becomes real science."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Sun Dome | ||
| Used on Venus to give relief from the endless rain. |
On Venus, the rain falls endlessly below an unremitting gray sky, and never a sight of the sun. It could drive men mad.
| The two men sat together in the rain. Behind them sat two other men who were wet and tired and
slumped like clay that was melting. The lieutenant looked up. He had a face that once had been
brown and now the rain had washed it pale, and the rain had washed the color from his eyes and they
were white, as were his teeth, and as was his hair. He was all white. Even his uniform was beginning
to turn white, and perhaps a little green with fungus...
They crossed the river, and in crossing they thought of the Sun Dome, somewhere ahead of them, shining in the jungle rain. A yellow house, round and bright as the sun. A house fifteen feet high by one hundred feet in diameter, in which was warmth and quiet and hot food and freedom from rain. And in the center of the Sun Dome, of course, was a sun. A small floating free globe of yellow fire, drifting in space at the top of the building where you could look at it from where you sat, smoking or reading a book or drinking your hot chocolate crowned with marshmallow dollops. There it would be, the yellow sun, just the size of the Earth sun, and it was warm and continuous, and the rain world of Venus would be forgotten as long as they stayed in that house and idled their time. |
| From The Illustrated Man,
by Ray Bradbury. Published by Doubleday in 1951 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the sunray tank from Warlord of Mars (1914) by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
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news articles:
- SunTracker One Brings The Sun Inside
| Miners! NASA Wants To License RASSOR Excavator |
| Starshade Will Help Space Telescope To Search For Exoplanets |
| Yes, But Do Astrobees Have Lasers For Lightsaber Training? |
| Japan Uses Explosives On Asteroid |
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