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"[Science fiction] is the only kind of writing that allows you to look at the world we live in and change one piece at a time."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Solar System Map For Aliens | ||
| A rough diagram showing our solar system and its planets. |
I don't know of an earlier reference to drawing a map to make sure aliens know where they are...
| Ever since Marston had first mentioned Professor Hornby’s theory that the things were Mercutians, I had been trying to find some way of verifying it. Now that we were on semi-intimate terms with the tetrahedra, I wondered if I might not get them, somehow, to supply this evidence.
There was soft rock in the structure of the watch-tower and, as Valdez had rescued my tool kit from the plane, I had a hammer and chisel. With these, and a faulty memory, I set out to make a rough scale diagram of the inner planets, leaning a bit on the Professor’s theory. I cut circular grooves for the orbits of the four minor planets—Mercury, Venus,. Earth, Mars—and dug a central pit.
 (Solar system map from 'Tetrahedra of Space' by P. Schuyler Miller) In this I set a large nugget of gold, found in the ruins of the fortress, for the Sun, and in the grooves a tiny black pebble for Mercury, a large white one for Venus, and a jade bead from the ruins for Earth. Earth had a very small white moon, in its own spiral orbit. Mars was a chunk of iron with two grains of sand for moons. |
| Technovelgy from Tetrahedra of Space,
by P. Schuyler Miller. Published by Wonder Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
And where a better planet (for them) might be!
DURING those long, empty days on the crag-side he had been listening, learning, drilling into his scientist’s brain the meaning of every voiced command that the great master of the Mercutian tetrahedra thundered to his crystal hosts, learning their inflections, storing them in his mind!
He had memorized a simple vocabulary— a host of nouns and verbs that even yet seem beyond the power of any man to glean from the muttering of an alien race, coupled with the actions that fitted the words, But Marston fad learned, and with the sullen voice of the giant drum he was replying, in words that the tetrahedron understood!
Marston was speaking to the tetrahedra with the voice of his drum!
(Aliens shown map from 'Tetrahedra of Space' by P. Schuyler Miller)
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'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'
'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'
