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"The world is really so surreal these days that it's necessary for us to blunt it somehow in order to stay sane. The artist functions to short-circuit the buffering mechanism, so that people can occasionally perceive the weirdness of things as they are."
- William Gibson
 |
| Shock-Absorbing Seats | ||
| Perfect for the many gravities of acceleration upon take-off. |
Early use of the phrase.
| They passed inside and the stern-door closed and whirred as Hartley spun it carefully shut. Climbing the light metal ladders inside the upreared craft the four men gained the pilot-house, where Calden took his accustomed seat at the controls. Strapped into their shock-absorbing seats, the four men looked down over the station and its swarming throngs, a busy scene in the morning sunlight. |
| Technovelgy from Evans of the Earth-Guard,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Air Wonder Stories in 1930 Additional resources -
|
Why would you need shock-absorbing seats? Consider this:
Compare to the water-springs from From the Earth to the Moon (1867) by Jules Verne.
The lights on the starter’s tower had flashed from yellow to
green, and then to red. Calden was watching them imperturbably, his hands resting on the main firing-levers, while
Evans, as always at the moment of starting, involuntarily drew
a deep preparatory breath. Then the lights flashed suddenly
pure white, Calden’s hands depressed the levers with a single
motion, and, as a thunderous blast of sound broke from the
great rocket’s stern beneath them, they were pressed with
immeasurable force into their seats.
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
