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"We are all repositories for genetically-encoded information that we're all spreading back and forth amongst each other, all the time. We're just lousy with information."
- Neal Stephenson

Gansas  
  Migratory birds that fly all the way to the Moone.  

Clever use of the idea of migratory birds, which was not widely accepted for more than a century after the writing of the story. Science!

It was now the season that these Birds were wont to take their flight away, as our Cuckoes and swallowes doe in Spaine towards the Autumne. They (as after I perceived) mindfull of their usuall voyage, even as I began to settle my selfe for the taking of them in, as it were with one consent, rose up...

Not many howers after the departure of that divelish company from me, my Gansa's began to bestir themselves, still directing their course toward the Globe or body of the Moone: And they made their way with that incredible swiftnesse, as I thinke they gained not so little as Fifty Leagues in every hower. In that passage I noted three things very remarkeable: one that the further we went, the lesser the Globe of the Earth appeared unto us; whereas still on the contrary side the MOONE shewed her selfe more and more monstrously huge.

From The Man in the Moone, by Francis Godwin.
Published by Unknown in 1638
Additional resources -

Compare to the lift chair from The Last Castle by Jack Vance.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Man in the Moone
  More Ideas and Technology by Francis Godwin
  Tech news articles related to The Man in the Moone
  Tech news articles related to works by Francis Godwin

Gansas-related news articles:
  - Drone Swarm Lifts Truck - Not!

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