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inspiration

"Superlifter" is a type of spaceship in the "Culture" series of novels by Iain M Banks:

The General System Vehicle Sanctioned Parts List appeared on the screen in the Superlifter's lounge as another point of light in the starfield. It became a silver dot and grew quickly to fill the screen, though there was no sign of detail on the shining surface.
~That'll be it.
~I suppose so.
~We've probably passed near several escort craft, though they wouldn't be making their presence so obvious. What the Navy called a High Value Unit; you never send them out alone.
~ I thought it might look a little more grand.
~They always look pretty unimposing from the outside.

The Superlifter plunged into the centre of the silver surface. Within it was like looking from an aircraft inside a cloud, then there was the impression of plunging through another surface, then another, then dozens more in quick succession, flicking past like thumbed paper pages in an antique book.

They burst from the last membrane into a great hazy space lit by a yellow-white line burning high above, beyond layers of wispy cloud. They were above and aft of the craft's stern. The ship was twenty-five kilometres long and ten wide. The top surface was parkland; wooded hills and ridges separated by and studded with rivers and lakes.

Bracketed by colossal ribbed and buttressed outriggers chevroned in red and blue, the GSV's sheer sides were a golden, tawny colour, scattered with a motley confusion of foliage-covered platforms and balconies and punctured by a bewildering variety of brightly lit openings, like a glowing vertical city set into sandstone cliffs three kilometres high. The air swarmed with craft of every type Quilan had ever seen or heard of, and more besides. Some were tiny, some were the size of a Superlifter. Still smaller dots were individual people, floating in the air.

Two other giant vessels, each barely an eighth of the size of the Sanctioned Parts List, shared the envelope of the GSV's surrounding field enclosure. Riding a few kilometres off each side, plainer and more dense-looking, they were surrounded with their own little concentrations of smaller flying craft.

~It is a little more impressive on the inside, isn't it?
Hadesh Hurler remained silent.

posted Wed 4 Jun 2003 in /projects/superlifter | link

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