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"Science fiction operates a little bit like science itself, in principle. You've got thousands of people exploring ideas, putting forth their own hypotheses. Most of them are dead wrong; a few stand the test of time; everything looks kind of quaint in hind"
- Peter Watts
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| Farside | ||
| The portion of the Moon's surface that faces away from Earth. |
This appears to be the earliest use in science fiction of this handy term, if not in scientific literature (see below).
| The Authority booked first-class passages for all expeditionary personnel, which in the case of a hop up to the Moon meant a direct ferry traveling at one gee all the way. Standing by the observation window, an untasted drink in his hand, David Ryerson remarked: "You know, this is only the third time I’ve been off Earth. And the other two, we trans-shipped at Satellite and went free-fall most of the way.” "Sounds like fun,” said Maclaren. "I must try it sometime.” "You . . .in your line of work . . . you must go to the Moon quite often,” said Ryerson shyly. Maclaren nodded. "Mount Ambarzumian Observatory, on Farside. Still a little dust and gas to bother us, of course, but I'll let the purists go out to Pluto Satellite and bring me back their plates.” |
| Technovelgy from We Have Fed Our Sea,
by Poul Anderson. Published by Astounding in 1958 Additional resources -
|
Arthur C. Clarke picked up on this expression quickly; this quote is from A Fall of Moondust (1961):
The first person to use the word "farside" for the far side of the moon was the English astronomer Richard Proctor in his book "The Moon" published in 1873. Proctor wrote:
Depending on your lights, you might consider this quote from The Other Side of the Moon (1929) by Edmond Hamilton to be the first use of the term:
Compare to near side from The Moon Master (1930) by Charles W. Diffin, dark side from Power Planet (1931) by Murray Leinster, the ungainly (but descriptive) spaceward lunar hemisphere from Dawn of the Demigods, by Raymond Z. Gallun, published by Planet Stories in 1954, dirtside from Starman Jones (1953) by Robert Heinlein.
"It won't take me long to describe the MOONCRASH organization," said Pat. "And, frankly, it wasn't planned to deal with a situation like this. When a ship's down on the Moon, it can be spotted very quickly from one of the satellites—either Lagrange II, above Earthside, or Lagrange I, over Farside. But I doubt if they can help us now; as I said, we've probably gone down without a trace."
"The side of the moon which is turned towards the earth is called the near side; the other side, which is never seen from the earth, is called the far side."
OVER that colossal city, lying in dusk beneath the lunar night, our flying-circles drove, a city that I recognized was built upon the far side of the moon from earth, and which amazed me utterly. Why had these turtle-races built their tremendous, air-tight city on the moon's far side alone, where it could never be seen from earth?
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