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"My father was a master mechanic; I grew up with a screwdriver in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other."
- Frank Herbert
 |
| Bat Wings | ||
| The dream of human-powered winged flight becomes a reality - in low gravity, of course. |
In this excerpt from the novel, the inhabitants of an orbiting habitat take time for recreation.
| There were wings attached to hooks at the entrance. McLeve took down a set and began strapping them on. Black bat wings. They made him look like a fallen angel, Milton's style. He handed me another pair. "Like to fly?" he asked... I was a tiny chick in a vast eggshell. The landscape was wrapped around me: fields and houses... Every direction was down. |
| Technovelgy from Limits,
by Larry Niven. Published by Del Rey in 1985 Additional resources -
|
This is from Spirals a short story by Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
Hang gliding is a similar sport; it gained popularity in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Hang gliding is based on a technology developed in 1948 called the "parawing", a
V-shaped flexible airfoil made of fabric. NASA showed early interest in using it for returning space craft.
As alert readers have pointed out, Robert Heinlein originated this idea almost thirty years earlier in The Menace From Earth - see the entry for Bat's Wings. For a different take on this idea, see the Dragonfly sky-bike from Rendezvous With Rama (1972) by Arthur C. Clarke.
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'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'
'... with the Master-operator all you have to do is push one! A remarkable achievement!'
'Not like me. A T-1000, advanced prototype. A mimetic poly-alloy. Liquid metal.'
'It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
'The massive feet working the pedals, arms and hands flashing and glinting...'
'There were cubic miles of it, and it glistened like a silvery Christmas tree...'
'Jason had been guiding the caravan of cars as usual...'
"The robot solemnly hit a ball against the wall, picked it up and teed it, hit it again, over and again...'
