“By His Bootstraps” (1941).
Time-travel story. One subplot involves the hero (it is very strongly implied) seducing his girlfriend into bed by promising to marry her, just before he leaves the 20th Century forever. That was why there used to be such thing as breach of promise suits – so a man could not “spoil” a girl with impunity.
Hmmm, I would argue that the character in question was not a hero and painted as a jerk by Heinlein. You could almost make the same claims for “All you Zombies” 
But I am probably nitpicking. Overall, his heroes were worshipful of women and the women in their lives. Even when the relationships were somewhat twisted or abnormal.
Jim
Yeh . . . but it still looks like an effing airplane modified for spaceflight. I prefer the Babyon 5 Starfury – obviously designed by somebody who had a rush of brains to the head and said, “Say, a space fighter craft should be designed to exploit 3-D freedom of movement! And the pilot doesn’t have to be in a seated position!”
I hate it when my Brains all rush to my Head.
I avoid standing on my head to prevent this.
Mostly I avoid standing on my head because I dislike footprints in my hair.
After 3 pages I just have to say:
it’s still the Nautilus.
A nice seaweed cigar after a glass of sperm whale milk, ahhhh.
Although they’re possibly more fantasy than science fiction, I’d nominate the airships from the Final Fantasy game series. The later games have plenty of cinematics that show these massive ships gliding through the clouds. It’s just fantastic to watch.
I have to agree that the Nautilus is currently leading the pack, though, and I’ve never even seen the movie. The design is just that cool.
I’ve always been fascinated by vehicles that can operate in more than one medium (air+water, air+space, etc.) I’d have to nominate the SULACO (pic of model) because it covered all three (space, air, ground). It launched dropships, which flew down from orbit, thru the atmosphere, landed, and then disgorged cool-looking tanks. Something about that is just cool. (Besides, it looked like a gun)
In real-life, LockMart is working on something similar called the Cormorant. It’s an airplane that launches from a submarine, rockets to the surface, then flies away to do its thing. Once it’s finished, it returns to the water, and dives back to the mother ship. The nerdy little kid in me hopes this gets built.
You’re right. I wonder what neuron short-circuited to come up with that factoid. Must have been a self-sacrifice to keep me from recalling Ewoks.
Damn.
The Borg Cube…I don’t know if it is “cool” or not but it is definately kick ass scary.
Dunno if it’s as cool as some of the other nominations, but I gotta give props to the BC-303 Prometheus and BC-304 Daedalus battlecruisers (and their sisterships, along with their compliments of F-302 Death Gliders) from StarGate SG1. Very nifty ships considering they were built on the sly by 21st Century USA and Russia using relatively recently aquired alien technology. Though we’ve never seen one win a fight against an alien mothership without cheating (yay using transporters to deliver tactical nukes!), these things are usually quite capable of holding their own in a fight at least long enough to help the heros make a timely escape or unleash a superweapon of some kind.
Does kinda bug me that they’re operated by the Air Force. I mean, it makes sense, since the Air Force does the space stuff, but it kinda makes sense to me that the Navy should operate big capital ships, spaceborne or otherwise.
Space Cruiser Yamamoto: Warp/Jump Engines, Space Fighters, Missiles, Wave-Freaking-Motion-Gun.
USS Seaview, and its Flying Sub.
Only spaceship with a punchline.
Dude! Does the Mach 5 count for nothing?
But it looks dumb!
I am surprised no-one has mentioned “Discovery One”.
Kewl spinning crew segment complete with cryo tanks, pod bay doors, explosive bolts, a malfunctioning AE-35 unit and a psychotic lipreading computer. What more do ya want?
Not to mention the most realistic one here.
Realistic does not always equal cool.
Well, it’s only SLIGHTLY more realistic than the Omega Destroyer, which ALSO uses a rotating section for gravity (actually, now that I think about it, the Omega basically looks like a bigger, meaner, militarized version of the Discovery, with a fighter bay and a set of plasma cannons/particle beam turrets replacing the pod bay. Also, the fusion powerplants and the hyperspace jumppoint generator are a bit less realistic. And the Omega can launch Starfury and Thunderbolt fighters, while the Discovery only launches little space egg pods and astronauts.
The Michael is pretty realistic I think, except possibly for the bomb-pumped lasers.
