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"Science fiction is the very literature of change. In fact, it is the only such literature we have."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Robot Spectra Analyzer | ||
| Device used to find ones position in real space. |
So, you're lost in real space. There must be some way to determine your position relative to the known positions of the stars.
| It was a twenty-hour jump, ship's time, and I came through in the middle of nowhere. The robot analyzer chuckled to itself and scanned all the stars, comparing them to the spectra of Proxima Centauri. It finally rang a bell and blinked a light. I peeped through the eyepiece.
A last reading with the photocell gave me the apparent magnitude and a comparison with its absolute magnitude gave me its distance. Not as bad as I thought - a six-week run, give or take a few days. After feeding a course tape into the robot pilot, I strapped into the acceleration tank and went to sleep. |
| Technovelgy from The Repairman,
by Harry Harrison. Published by Galaxy Science Fiction in 1959 Additional resources -
|
Acceleration tanks were used to make boosting under high gravities less trying. SF audiences were used to the concept by the time this short story was written; see the entry for acceleration-tank from Doc Smith's 1934 novel Triplanetary.
Compare to the Astroposit from The Hunch (1961) by Christopher Anvil.
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'You are who we say you are, Dr. Dakin,' Turner said.'
'It's area, and its consequent light-gathering capacity, was many times greater than any rigid mirror...'
'Tell me your torments,' the Padre said, in an elderly voice marked with compassion.
'...a slender-legged tripod surmounted by a spherical body no larger than a football.'
'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'
'The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.'
