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"Science and science fiction, how do you even distinguish the two?"
- Jerry Pournelle
 |
| Space-Post | ||
| A trading post in space. |
An early use of this term, which derives from the "trading posts" of the old American West.
| Inside the low sheet-metal commissary building of the space post known on the Interplanetary Relations & Commerce Commission’s roster as No. 291, Oliver Blakston grumbled within his air helmet — where, to be sure, there was nobody to hear him grumble but himself. All space-post factors grumbled, as a matter of traditional right. Besides, it helped to pass the time between customers, and when these number only a score of prospectors, a dozen Martian spore gatherers and looth wool shearers, and one aged, slightly senile fugitive from justice, there is plenty of time to pass. |
| Technovelgy from Episode On Dhee Minor,
by Harry Walton. Published by Astounding in 1939 Additional resources -
|
Each space-post had it's own special defenses:
Blakston thanked him, inwardly
smiling at Queel’s melodramatic manner. But the warning was bom of the
Ootlandah’s not unfounded fear of
the genus loothaguri, which might be
described as an acre of animal with
but one characteristic — an appetite.
The factor himself felt no anxiety at
the approach of one of these weird
creatures, for the space post’s electrical fences could turn aside a dozen
of them.
A "trading post" (or trading station) was a place in the old West where the owner (usually called the "factor") would offer different goods for sale or barter.
Clifford Simak also made use of the trading post idea in his 1961 novel Time is the Simplest Thing. The commercial entity called Fishhook used its technology to travel the stars; different goods or products were brought back and sold in places called Trading Posts, which was taken as a sign that the company looked down on everyone else. Read this article on the transo which linked the Trading Posts together.
"There is news,” continued the
native. "Approaching from sunward
is great looth. Beware, man friend!”
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'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
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'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
