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"I was driving a dynamite truck when I was 14 years old in North Carolina."
- Harlan Ellison
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| Magnetic Coil Slippers | ||
| Maintain your footing in zero gravity. |
| Mrs. Blaiskell brought forward service shoes, worn to some extent by everyone at the station: slippers with magnetic coils in the soles. Wires ted to a power bank at the belt. By adjusting a rheostat, any degree of magnetism could be achieved.
"When a person works, she needs a footing," Mrs. Blaiskell explained. “Of course there’s not much to do, once you get on to it. 'Cleaning is easy, with our good filters ; still there’s sometimes a stir of dust and always a little film of oil that settles from the air." |
| Technovelgy from Abercrombie Station,
by Jack Vance. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1952 Additional resources -
|
Compare to space-boots from The Passing of Ku Sui (1932) by Anthony Gilmore, magnetic boots from Atomic Fire (1931) by Raymond Z. Gallun, antigrav boots from The Day We Celebrate (1941) by Nelson S. Bond, Steel-Lined Space Boots from Roamer of the Stars (1938) by Clyde Wilson, the neutronium slippers from Revolt on the Tenth World (1940) by Edmond Hamilton, space socks from Lost Rocket (1941) by Manly Wade Wellman, the weight shoes from The World With A Thousand Moons (1942) by Edmond Hamilton, magnetic sandals from The Warriors (1966) by Larry Niven, magnetic-soled shoes from Space Tug (1953) by Murray Leinster, the grip shoes from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Arthur C. Clarke and the flexible sprung boots from Inherit the Stars (1977) by James P. Hogan.
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'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.'
