On Thu, 16 Aug 2018 09:54:17 -0500, "Michael F. Stemper"
Post by Michael F. StemperPost by m***@sky.comPost by James NicollNot On Your Life: Six Means of SF Transportation I Would Not Use
https://www.tor.com/2018/08/15/not-on-your-life-six-means-of-sf-transportation-i-would-not-use/
Some of it is what you are used to. There is a nice piece in Blish's Cities in Flight series where Amalfi is scared by some sort of fast ground transport indigenous to the planet they have just landed on and is saying they have got to get some ground transport of their own organised so they don't have to use whatever ground transport is provided by the planet they have just landed on.
In a similar vein, Beowulf Schaeffer is truly spooked in _Flatlander_
(Niven) when he encounters what are basically hot-rodders in the
24th and a halfth century.
The description of this scene, which is really throw-away and not
relevant to the plot is priceless.
Niven also wrote this (from _Cloak of Anarchy_):
Crowds tend to draw crowds. A few minutes after leaving Ron, I joined
a semicircle of the curious to see what they were watching.
A balding, lantern-jawed individual was putting something together: an
archaic machine, with blades and a small gasoline motor. The T-shaped
wooden handle was brand new and unpainted. The metal parts were dull
with the look of ancient rust recently removed.
The crowd speculated in half whispers. What was it? Not part of a car,
not an outboard motor, though it had blades, too small for a motor
scooter; too big for a motor skateboard . . .
"Lawn mover," said the white-haired lady next to me. She was one of
those small, birdlike people who shrivel and grow weightless as they
age, and live forever. Her words meant nothing to me. I was about to
ask, when -
The lantern-jawed man finished his work, and twisted something and the
motor started with a roar. Black smoke puffed out. In triumph he
gripped the handles. Outside, it was a prison offense to build a
working internal combustion machine. Here -
With the fire of dedication burning in his eyes, he wheeled his
infernal machine across the grass. He left a path as flat as a rug. It
was a Free Park, wasn't it?
The smell hit everyone at once: a black dirt in the air, a stink of
harf-burned hydrocarbons attacking the nose and eyes. I gasped and
coughed. I'd never smelled anything like it.
The crescent crowd roared and converged.
He squawked when they picked up his machine. Someone found a switch
and stopped it. Two men confiscated the tool kit and went to work with
screwdriver and hammer. The owner objected. He picked up a heavy pair
of pliers and tried to commit murder.
A copseye zapped him and the man with the hammer, and they both hit
the lawn without bouncing. The rest of them pulled the lawn mower
apart and bent and broke the pieces.
"I'm half-sorry they did that," said the old woman. "Sometimes I miss
the sound of lawn mowers. My dad used to mow the lawn on Sunday
mornings."
I said, "It's a Free Park."
"Then why can't he build anything he pleases?"
"He can. He did. Anything he's free to build, we're free to kick
apart." And my mind flashed, Like Ron's rigged copseye.
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko