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"There's a poetry in the materials we use to construct our world of artifacts; it speaks of our long history as a technological species."
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One of the common literary devices used to fix the problem of having your characters visit another star system; the problem being that if your characters travel in ordinary space, they will probably be dead by the time they get there.
Simmons does much more with these devices in his story; I don't want to spoil the story by revealing the details. He details very carefully how the use of this device often ruins the very thing people use farcasters to come and see; technology as simple as the interstate highway has brought our national parks to the point of closing to visitors.
The farcaster technology was also developed by The Core, a group of disaffected artificial intelligences that effectively seceded from human space.
For a much earlier example, see the entry for Ramsbotham Gate, from Robert Heinlein's 1955 novel Tunner in the Sky. For something designed to work on the surface of a planet (as opposed to between planets), see the stepping discs from Larry Niven's Ringworld. Comment/Join this discussion ( 4 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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