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"We [science fiction writers] always wanted to believe in "private sector" space -- hucksters make better characters than a government does."
- Larry Niven
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| Bladder Birds | ||
| Alien life well adapted. |
I don't usually put invented animal life in the index, but I couldn't resist this one.
| “Look I” she cried. "There’s something moving on the peaks — like a big ball. And way up where there’s no air at all !”
I glanced over. “It’s just a bladder bird,” I said indifferently. I’d seen plenty of them ; they were the commonest mobile form of life on Europa. But of course Qaire hadn’t, and she was eagerly curious. I explained. I threw stones into a tinkling grove of song-bushes until I flushed up another, and it went gliding over our heads with its membrane stretched taut. I told her that the three-foot creature that had sailed like a flying squirrel was the same sort as the giant ball she had glimpsed among the airless peaks, only the one on the peaks bad inflated its bladder. The creatures were able to cross from valley to valley by carrying their air with them in their big, balloonlike bladders. And, of course, bladder birds weren’t really birds at all ; they didn’t fly, but glided like the lemurs and flying squirrels of Earth, and naturally, couldn’t even do that when they were up on the airless heights. |
| Technovelgy from Redemption Cairn,
by Stanley G. and Helen Weinbaum. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1936 Additional resources -
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'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
