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"Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful."
- Philip K. Dick
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| Planetruck | ||
| Huge vehicle for planetary surface transport. |
| AFTER THREE DAYS, twenty hours plus in space, the S.S. Selwyn fluffed to a spectacular landing on Andrigo, coming straight down from the Sun so the Greenies wouldn’t be able to spot her in that tremendous glare. The horribly twisted plants and withered trees of that pitiless desert bent and were demolished as the ship furrowed through the sand. Instantly, all was an orderly confusion, as the amid-ships gangway was let down, and the broad-tired planetruck, with a truck-bed as big as the floor of a large house, was yo-heave-hoed rolling from the ship. Then the astromen went fast at the work of loading her with hogshead after hogshead of indele-acetic acid.
 (Planetruck from 'Slave Ship to Andrigo' by Ross Rocklynne) He rammed in the starter and the planetruck leaped ahead. But Johnny Single was aboard. One terrific leap of fury had taken him into the cab, both arms around Hawk’s neck. In a threshing heap, Hawk and Single tumbled from the leaping truck, fell just free of the grinding wheels. Single drove off without a backward look, the heavily scored treads of the planetruck kicking up clouds of dusty sand. In the shallow gravity the truck rode easily, bound for the oasis where lived the tribe of Greenies. |
| Technovelgy from The Slave Ship to Andrigo,
by Ross Rocklynne. Published by Planet Stories in 1951 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the electrotruck from The Corkscrew of Space (1956) by Poul Anderson, the tractatruck from The Moon is Hell (1950) by John Campbell, the autonomous truck from Autofac (1955) by Philip K. Dick and the automatic truck from Mechnocracy (1932) by Miles J. Breurer.
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'The crawling... object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
'Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses...'
'You couldn't have the capstone without the pyramid to hold it up.'
'the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers...'
I'm hoping that this procedure becomes a normal part of medical practice!
'... nothing was perfected until M. Pantalon announced the completion of his automatic valet.'
'...its streets were of remarkable width, with few or no buildings so high as mosques, churches, State-offices, or palaces in Tellurian cities.'
