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"In 1970 I found little difficulty staying 30 years ahead of the man in the street, and now I find it difficult to stay 18 months ahead of the man on the street."
- Vernor Vinge
 |
| Langston Field | ||
| A protective energy shield. |
A great defensive weapon. It felt very cold if you encountered it with some part of your body, since the very motion of the molecules would be slowed.
| The Langston Field absorbed energy; that was its basic function. It absorbed even the kinetic energy of expanding gas or radiation particles, with an efficiency proportional to the cube of the incoming velocities. In battle, the hellish fury of hydrogen torpedoes, and the concentrated photon energies of lasers, would strike the Field and be dispersed, absorbed, contained. As the energy levels increased, the Field would begin to glow, its absolute black becoming red, orange, yellow, climbing up the spectrum toward the violet. |
| Technovelgy from The Mote in God's Eye,
by Larry Niven (w/J. Pournelle). Published by Simon & Schuster in 1974 Additional resources -
|
Since the energy field tended to form in a circle around the generator, cities that protected themselves with Langston Fields were circular.
For the hemispherical protection of cities, compare to the wall in the air from Rondah, or Thirty-Three Years in a Star (1887) by Florence Carpenter Dieudonné, the Lanson screen from The Lanson Screen (1936) by Leo Zagat, the spindizzy from Cities in Flight (1957) by James Blish and the bobble from The Peace War (1984) by Vernor Vinge.
The Langston field is based on energy fields in E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series from the 1940's. See also the shield from Skylark Three (1930) by EE 'Doc' Smith, the personal force shield from Foundation (1951) by Isaac Asimov and the deflector shield from Star Wars (1976) by George Lucas.
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