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All the Wonder that Would Be pp 229–263Cite as

Transportation

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Part of the book series: Science and Fiction ((SCIFICT))

Abstract

The building of nations and empires depends upon the capacity to move goods and people. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries gave us many examples of how transportation affects economics, politics, and the workings of democracy. It’s hardly surprising, then, that SF writers have a long history of imagining new forms of transport: they were hardly going to ignore one of the main drivers of societal change. Authors interested in telling tales of galaxy-spanning civilizations had an absolute requirement to discuss transportation: how else could the adventures unfold without some new form of transport? Authors who wanted to tell more local tales of the future still needed technology to get their protagonists from A to B as quickly as possible, just as earlier generations of storytellers used flying carpets and capricious genies to move their heroes, and stories, along.

The trouble with most forms of transport, he thought, is basically one of them not being worth all the bother.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DCQE, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK

    Stephen Webb

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  1. Stephen Webb
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Webb, S. (2017). Transportation. In: All the Wonder that Would Be. Science and Fiction. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51759-9_9

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