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"I kind of take it for granted that our great-grandchildren will regard us as a sort of precursor species. That they won't think of us as human and if we could see them, we probably wouldn't think of them as human either."
- William Gibson
 |
| 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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'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
