Arthur C. Clarke - A Space Odyssey 2 - 2010: Odyssey Two
“The standard of on-board English ranges from absolutely perfect – Chief Engineer Sasha Kovalev could earn a living as a BBC announcer – down to the if-you-talk-fast-enough-it-doesn't-matter-how-many-mistakes-you-make variety. The only one who isn't fluent is Zenia Marchenko, who replaced Irma Yakunina at the last moment. Incidentally, I'm glad to hear that Irma made a good recovery – what a disappointment that must have been! I wonder if she's started hang gliding again.â€
In addition to her physical and doubtless psychological scars, Zenia laboured under yet another handicap. She was a last-minute replacement, and everyone knew it. Irma Yakunina was to have been dietician and medical assistant aboard Leonov before that unfortunate argument with a hang glider broke too many bones.
Arthur C. Clarke - A Space Odyssey 4 - 3001: The Final Odyssey
Frank Poole awoke, but he did not remember. He was not even sure of his name.
Obviously, he was in a hospital room: even though his eyes were still closed, the most primitive, and evocative, of his senses told him that. Each breath brought the faint and not unpleasant tang of antiseptics in the air, and it triggered a memory of the time when - of course! - as a reckless teenager he had broken a rib in the Arizona Hang Gliding Championship.
He recognized the music, but it was a few minutes before he identified it; the fact that his wall was filled with winged humans circling gracefully round each other undoubtedly helped. But Tchaikovsky would have been utterly astonished to see this performance of Swan Lake - with the dancers actually flying…
Poole watched, entranced, for several minutes, until he was fairly confident that this was reality, and not a simulation: even in his own day, one could never be quite certain. Presumably the ballet was being performed in one of the many low-gravity environments - a very large one, judging by some of the images. It might even be here in Africa Tower.
I want to try that, Poole decided. He had never quite forgiven the Space Agency for banning one of his greatest pleasures - delayed parachute formation jumping - even though he could see the Agency's point in not wanting to risk a valuable investment. The doctors had been quite unhappy about his earlier hang gliding accident; fortunately his teenage bones had healed completely.
Arthur C. Clarke, Paul Preuss - Venus Prime 4 - The Medusa Encounter
Blake caught the faint but frantic hum of multiple step-monitors as the nearest railguns bobbed and swung, searching the skies, but no hypersonic chunks of steel were launched at the glowing globes overhead. The globes were virtually invisible to a very confused AARGGS, the antiaircraft railgun guidance system —
— because the targets were only twenty meters off the ground, unreflective, and so small that at radar wavelengths software written for targets no smaller or lower or slower than parasails and hang gliders couldn’t resolve them.
books mentioning hang gliding
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-The Magic Labyrinth, page 131, Philip José FarmerOver thirty-three years ago, he had arrived in Virolando. It was his intention to stay only long enough to talk a few times to La Viro, if he were permitted to do so. The he would go wherever the Church sent him. But Lat Viro had askem him to settle there, though he hand not said why or how long he could remain. After a year there, Göring had adopted the Esperanto name Fenikso (Phoenix).
Those had been the happiest years of his lives. Nor was there any reason to think he would not spend many more here.
This day would be much like the others, but its sameness was enjoyable and little varieties would garnish it.
After breakfast, he climbed up to a large building built on top of a rock spire on the left bank. Here he lectured his seminary students until a half-hour before noon. He went down swiftly to the ground and joined Kren at a grailstone. Afterwards, they went up to another spire and strapped themselves into hang gliders and launched themselves from the edge of the spire, six hundred feet above the ground.
The air above Vironlando glittered with thousands of gliders which slanted up and down, turned, dipped, rose, swooped, danced. Hermann felt like a bird, no, a free spirit. It was an illusion of freedom, all freedom was illusion, but it was the best.
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