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"It was [H.G. Wells'] adolescent fiction, his imaginative stories, that live forever - and yet are not acknowledged in literature classes as being great literature. So to hell with the academics!"
- Greg Bear
 |
| Teakettle | ||
| A standard rocket (uses hydrogen as a booster to leave the atmosphere). |
Heinlein used this term because he saw all spaceships being powered by atomic energy; the atomic pile would heat water or some other reaction matter.
| All I know about spaceships is that the ones that operate from the surface of a planet are true rockets but the voyageurs call them "teakettles" because of the steam jet of water or hydrogen they boost with. |
| Technovelgy from Double Star,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Doubleday in 1956 Additional resources -
|
One of the writing "tricks" that Heinlein uses to great effect in his stories is to use the common vocabulary of my grandparents (like "teakettle") to describe the common elements of the future. It lends a sense of familiarity and unconscious authority to the speaker.
The French Canadian word voyageur is also a nice choice to describe men who lived and worked in space. It neatly designates them as explorers and Americans, as well as spacemen, since the word was originally used to describe guides or traders in early North America.
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'If you're one of those rarities who haven't attended a rocket-polo "carnage", let me tell you it's a colorful affair.'
'They filed clumsily into the battleroom, like children in a swimming pool for the first time, clinging to the handholds along the side.'
'a walking balloon proceeded with long strides of its aluminum legs...'
'There was nowhere on the planet where science and technology could not provide one with a comfortable home...'
'Most men updated their PIP on New Year's Day...'
'...a misshapen, many-tentacled thing about twice the size of a man.'
