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"Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is."
- Isaac Asimov
 |
| Lift Chair | ||
| A single occupant lifted by great birds. |
The basic idea was used about three hundred years earlier.
| ...Xanten constrained six Birds to a lift chair, directed them first on a wide sweep around the castle, then south to Far Valley.
The Birds aired their usual complaints, then bounded down the deck in great ungainly hops which threatened to throw Xanten immediately to the pavement. At last gaining the air, they flew up in a spiral, Castle Hagedorn became an intricate miniature far below...
 (The Lift Chair from 'The Last Castle' by Jack Vance) Xanten indicated where he wished to alight; the Birds... set Xanten down so roughly that had he not been alert the shock would have pitched him head over heels. |
| Technovelgy from The Last Castle,
by Jack Vance. Published by Del Rey in 1967 Additional resources -
|
One of the very first novels that could reasonably be called science fiction, the 1638 work The Man in the Moone by Francis Godwin, featured a trip into space courtesy of Gansas, great birds that lifted a small craft upwards.
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Science Fiction
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'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
'Gaines and Harvey mounted tumblebugs, and kept abreast of the Cadet Captain...'
Accompanied by a small selection of similar ideas from science fiction.
'...war-balloons, or, as it would be more correct to call them, navigable aerostats.'
