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"To get anywhere, or even live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer."
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![]() This term refers to a way of moving large numbers of people over a relatively short distance (over flat surface).
The slidewalk is also a Heinlein favorite; you'll find references in his 1947 story It's Great to be Back!, his 1948 story Gentlemen, Be Seated and his 1948 novel Space Cadet:
It was a dull trip-climb on a scooter, ride down a completely featureless tunnel, climb off and go
through an airlock, get on another scooter and do it all over again. Mr. Knowles filled in with sales talk.
"This is temporary," he explained. "When we get the second tunnel dug, we'll cross-connect, take out the
airlocks, put a northbound slidewalk in this one, a southbound slidewalk in the other one, and you'll
make the trip in less than three minutes. Just like Luna City-or Manhattan."
Don left the booth and looked around for a cab stand. The station seemed more jammed than ever, with uniforms much in evidence, not only those of pilots and other ship personnel but military uniforms of many corps-and always the ubiquitous security police. Don fought his way through the crowd, down a ramp, along a slidewalk tunnel, and finally found what he wanted. There was a queue waiting for cabs; he joined it.
Space Cadet
The logical extension of this idea is a slidewalk that has been expanded to the size of an interstate highway; see rolling roads, from Heinlein's 1940 novelette The Roads Must Roll.
Of course, even earlier were the demonstration-level sliding walkways shown at the 1893 Chicago Exposition and the 1900 Paris Exposition. Here is a kinetoscope of the moving sidewalk from the 1900 Paris Exposition made by Thomas Edison.
Compare to the speed belt from Slaves of Mercury (1932) by Nat Schachner and the beltway from The Faceless Men (1948) by Leo Zagat. Comment/Join this discussion ( 2 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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Science Fiction
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