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"[Science fiction is] nightmares and visions, always outlined by the barely possible."
- Gregory Benford
 |
| Beltway | ||
| A moving sidewalk. |
This is the earliest use of this term that I know about.
| As he went down the ramp, the city’s hot, metallic smell greeted him and the deep toned vast growl of its teeming millions. After two days of isolation the terminal’s bustle confused, almost terrified Brad but he found himself on the beltway at the platform’s center and let it carry him down into the dim cool cavern beneath the enormous depot that bestrides mid-Manhattan.
The conveyor leveled out again, slid past the arched openings of the tubeways whose stupendous subsurface network finally had solved the metropolis’ perennial traffic problem. Glowing signs named the farflung metropolitan districts, from Perth Amboy to Peekskill, from Long Island’s South Shore to the Raritan. Behind each a tubecar whined into its terminal trough, disgorged a half-dozen passengers, swallowed a half-dozen others from the head of the waiting line and vanished to be immediately replaced by another. The whole system fanned out from this hub at the Old City’s center. Unless one’s destination was on the same line as his starting point, he transferred here. Long before the beltway had carried Brad to his own tube it had become annoyingly congested... |
| Technovelgy from The Faceless Men,
by Leo Zagat. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1948 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the speed belt from Slaves of Mercury (1932) by Nat Schachner, the slidewalk from Fritz Lieber's 1941 Sanity.and the moving roadway from H.G. Wells' 1899 story When the Sleeper Wakes.
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and Technology from The Faceless Men
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Tech news articles related to The Faceless Men
Tech news articles related to works by Leo Zagat
| Can Stratospheric Aerosol Injection Control The Weather? |
| Wolfram Alpha Mathematica Predicted by Science Fiction in 1948! |
| Special Lights For Driverless Cars! |
| 'Old People Began to Cross The Continent In Their Own Cars' |
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Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
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'Space-sickness is one of the most unpleasant sensations that a human being can experience. Not all are subject to it...'
'...I saw a nice black heavy-looking cloud sailing by just now, and I can get the electrical machine out in five minutes to draw it down.'
'From a distance it could resolve the cosmic rays reflected from various substances.'
'The answer to the dumb student's prayer.'
'He had travelled the space-lanes of the solar system for the greater part of his life...'
'The dinner was excellent. It was completely vegetarian — grown in specially prepared gardens in this Moon base...'
'Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind.'
'It was a relief to enter one of the comfortable autos, whisper a direction down the tube, and just know that you would be taken to your destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest manner.'
'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
