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"The point sticks in your head: physics rules. Virtue does not triumph unless the physics allows it."
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![]() As far as I know, the first use of this interesting term in an sf story.
Here are a couple of additional quotes:
...
All the phenomena of space were real and immediate, to the native asterite, as they had never been to his Earth-born forbears. Even a terraformed planetoid, such as Obania, had no safe hundreds of kilometers of insulating atmosphere, but only a thin gaseous envelope. Meteors falling here were something more than mysterious streaks of distant fire; here they were grim dice of life and death.
An earlier use of this word occurs in the Buck Rogers comic strips from 1929-1931:
![]() (Buck Rogers asterites) In a more jocular vein, fun-loving native Asterites are described in Juke Box Asteroid, a 1944 story by Joseph Farrell:
Burgess watched helplessly as the Venusians marched into his ship. He glowered at the guns held by their captors, and at the happy Asterites, who were leaping happily about the surface of the tiny planet, evidently overjoyed to be back in their natural habitat. The word "asterite" was also used in the 19th century (and possibly earlier) referring to a kind of opal that presented a star-like reflection. Compare to belter from The Warriors (1966) by Larry Niven. Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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