All human communities, wherever they may be in space, follow the same pattern. People were getting born, being cremated (with careful conservation of phosphorus and nitrates), rushing in and out of marriage, moving out of town, suing their neighbours, having parties, holding protest meetings, getting involved in astonishing accidents, writing Letters to the Editor, changing … Continue reading Arthur C. Clarke: Three Early Novels
[Gregor] pushed the list aside, found a pack of tattered cards, and laid out a hopeless solitaire of his own devising. Minutes later, Arnold stepped jauntily in. Gregor looked at his partner with suspicion. When the little chemist walked with that peculiar bouncing step, his round face beaming happily, it usually mean trouble for AAA … Continue reading Robert Sheckley: The AAA Ace Stories
And still I persist in wondering whether folly must always be our nemesis. Edgar Pangborn, “My Brother Leopold” (1973) Edgar Pangborn had a great name—not enough people mention that, I feel. He’s the latest author to feature in my intermittent project of rereading classic-but-not-now-famous science-fiction stories from my formative years—the sort of stories that some … Continue reading Edgar Pangborn: The “Darkening World” Cycle
No matter how many times he considered it, Jophiel shivered with awe. It was obviously an artefact, a made thing two light years in diameter. A ring around a supermassive black hole. Stephen Baxter, Xeelee: Redemption (2018) I’ve written about rotating space habitats in the past, and I’ve written about relativistic starships, so I guess … Continue reading Relativistic Ringworlds
“In my youth I thought I was the world’s worst crackpot screwball. The I met up with you and found that, in comparison, I was merely a sane, sensible, hard-working engineer. I never got over the disappointment of that realization. […]” Colin Kapp, “The Railways Up On Cannis” (1959) If you were a teenage science-fiction … Continue reading Colin Kapp: The Unorthodox Engineers
Obviously, the world and everything in it had been stupid since the dawn of time. It was just that, every now and again, there seemed to be a surge in stupid and there was nothing anyone could do about it except hang on and hope things would get better soon. This is the fourth novel … Continue reading Dave Hutchinson: Europe At Dawn
“People say all kinds of stupid stuff!” “Yes, but after people say stupid stuff, they do stupid stuff. That’s how history happens. […]“ I’ve written about Kim Stanley Robinson before, in reviewing his New York 2140 and Green Earth. Like Green Earth before it, the title of Red Moon seems to be a nod towards … Continue reading Kim Stanley Robinson: Red Moon
Thus, with all Einstein numbers of flight [velocity as a proportion of the speed of light] greater than 0.37 a major dark spot will surround the take-off star, and a minor dark spot the target star. Between the two limiting circles of these spots, all stars visible in the sky are coloured in all the … Continue reading The Myth Of The Starbow
This series of posts is about what the sky would look like to an observer travelling at close to the speed of light. In Part 1, I described the effects of light aberration on the apparent position of the stars; in Part 2, I introduced the effects of Doppler shift on the frequency of the … Continue reading The Celestial View From A Relativistic Starship: Part 4
This is the third of a series of posts about what the sky would look like for the passengers aboard an interstellar spacecraft moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light, like the Bussard interstellar ramjet above. In the first post, I wrote about light aberration, which will cause the apparent direction of … Continue reading The Celestial View From A Relativistic Starship: Part 3