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"I am first of all not a science fiction writer … I write, I suppose, what the Latin Americans call magic realism."
- Harlan Ellison
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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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'... the expressionless face before me was therefore that of the golem-wrestler, Rolem, a creature that could be set for five times the strength of a human being.'
'Waldo put his arms into the primary pair before him; all three pairs, including the secondary pair mounted before the machine, came to life.'
'... the glittering little rocket bolted to the black iron behind him.'
'The slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector...'
'The operation that had transformed half his body... had located the control switchboard in his teeth.'
