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"None of us, no matter what continent or island or ice cap, asked to be born in the first place, and that even somebody as old as I am, which is 80, only just got here."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
 |
| 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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'...Anything was possible in my imaginary environment.'
'Somewhere in space, a chrome and blue automobile raced the green light of Earth.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair...'
'We had discovered that metal was relatively impervious to the telepathic effect.'
'Detailed plans for the construction of the Gundstetter-Halone warp drive were flowing.'
'Do not waste your priceless company on the unappreciative folds of a sleep pod...'
'...so we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
