Harry Turtledove, Crosstime, "Fasarta"?

[Beale Knight]

Okay - so I'm showing my complete ignorance here but I'm too curious to care. I'm reading HT's Curious Notions book and twice now there's been reference to fasartas, once as "subflexive fasartas". From the context I get that it's some cool tech device, but the on-line dictionaries don't have the term loaded, and google gets me links to message board threads about building your own Tivo style recorder, gloks, and german pages. Not helpful.

So - who can tell me about fasartas, subflexive or otherwise? I'm burning to know.

 

[leoorionis]

Hello! I just picked up Harry Turtledove's "The Disunited States of America" and found a similar quote in it. I cracked up, because I just finished re-reading Robert A. Heinlein's classic 1956 novel, "The Door into Summer". I believe that it's the source of the phrase, "subflexive fasarta", and that Harry Turtledove, who's a fan as well as an author, is indulging himself in an inside joke. The Heinlein quote is:

I've thought about what could be done with time travel
commercially if it were declassified -- making short jumps,
setting up machinery to get back, taking along components. But
someday you'd make one jump too many and not be able to set up for
your return because it's not time to railroad. Something
simple, like a special alloy, could whip you. And there is that
truly awful hazard of not knowing which way you are going. Imagine
winding up at the court of Henry VIII with a load of subflexive
fasartas intended for the twenty-fifth century. Being becalmed in
the horse latitudes would be better.

This quote is from Chapter 12 of "Door into Summer". -- Leo