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"I do think there is a link in that in both cases, writing fiction or writing a computer program, at any given moment you're focusing on a very specific and particular thing—one word, one line of code, whatever."
- Neal Stephenson
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| Nose-Tubes | ||
| Rocket blasts from the front of a ship, to brake it. |
| In the next half-score of hours in which they hurtled on toward earth, Evans saw that Seaworth was indeed getting more and more impatient and eager as the great disk grew large before them. He fretted at the delay as they moved in through earth’s atmosphere at slackening speed, and down through the crowded converging space-lanes toward the huge New York inter-stellar station. And when the great Earth-Guard ship shot down into the funnel-shaped landing-framework and came to a halt with all its nose-tubes firing, Seaworth emerged from it with its first officers.
BRIEFLY he assured himself once more that Evans was willing for him to make the trip back out to the moon in the Earth-Guard craft in the following week, and he also made certain that his own little rocket could remain attached to the greater craft and be refueled with it. Then he hastened away in the crowds that poured here and there across and around the great rocket-station. |
| Technovelgy from Evans of the Earth-Guard,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Air Wonder Stories in 1930 Additional resources -
|
Leo Zagat makes use of this phrase just two years later in The Cavern of the Shining Pool (1932):
The nose-tubes were on full force and they couldn't brake her! In minutes, in seconds, we should crash against the red world into infinitesimal fragments.
The first reference to the idea is Jules Verne's retro rockets, found in From the Earth to the Moon, published in 1867.
Great, whirling, scarlet clouds became distinct, blanketing the strange world that had us in its grip. A craggy spire thrust above the vapor, spearing to impale our vessel.
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'...Anything was possible in my imaginary environment.'
'Somewhere in space, a chrome and blue automobile raced the green light of Earth.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair...'
'We had discovered that metal was relatively impervious to the telepathic effect.'
'Detailed plans for the construction of the Gundstetter-Halone warp drive were flowing.'
'Do not waste your priceless company on the unappreciative folds of a sleep pod...'
'...so we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
