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"The point sticks in your head: physics rules. Virtue does not triumph unless the physics allows it."
- Larry Niven
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| Reflected Artificial Sun | ||
| Sending light to another planet via mirror. |
One of the earliest uses of this idea in science fiction - but not in science, see below.
| The artificial sun was reflected to Inferno by means of the huge parabolic mirrors of the super-power station in the Rockies. But the relative positions of the luminary, of Earth, and of Inferno had to be calculated to” a nicety.
And, according to Mackay, in spite of the most ingenious reflecting devices, there must be a period of one hour during which the intervention of Jupiter threw the artificial sun into eclipse. That period was now due, and Mackay had calculated it by means of a wrist-chronometer stolen from the station by a slave, who had later been expelled. The three were to approach as near as possible to the station, then to await the onset of the eclipse; in the darkness, to make an attempt to scale the fence. |
| Technovelgy from Revolt on Inferno,
by Victor Rousseau. Published by Miracle Science and Fantasy Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
In 1923, German physicist Hermann Oberth described space mirrors with a diameter of 100 to 300 km in his book Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen, consisting of a grid network of individually adjustable mirrors. Space mirrors in orbit around the Earth are intended to focus sunlight on individual regions of the earth's surface.
Compare to the electrono-mirror from The Day We Celebrate (1941) by Nelson S. Bond.
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'He was in a high-ceilinged windowless cell with walls of glittering white porcelain.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors...'
'The robant and the tiny old woman entered the control room slowly...'
'Guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs... What are the odds?'
'It is as you thought when you constructed the time crystal, my master Vaylan.'
'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
