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"The SF approach: an awareness that things could have been different, that this is one of many possible worlds, that if you came to this world from some other planet, this would be a science fiction world."
- Neal Stephenson
 |
| Stopper Bubble | ||
| Device that halts time within its boundaries. |
| "Well, what it look like, and what it feel like, is that time stops inside that stopper bubble, so that's what I call 'em."
"So, for all practical purposes..." Jubal thought about it. "Yeah, I squinched up real tight, me, and I turn on de stopper bubble, and as soon as I touch that button... dere I am wit' you guys, and I'm fallin'..." |
| Technovelgy from Red Lightning,
by John Varley. Published by Ace in 2006 Additional resources -
|
Here are a few more details:
"Stoppers," he said. "See, there ain't really no bubbles at all, no. I mean, they look like bubbles, so that's what I call 'em, but they really... the word the other folks use for 'em is superstrings, but that's stupid. They ain't strings and they ain't super."
"...the bubbles don't have no insides, see. They's not even really all here, the silvery part you see is just the part that sticks out from where they really are into where we really are."
"Well, time is different in 'em. Maybe time is zeroed out, I still haven't figgered out all the equations for that one."
Compare to the Slaver stasis field from Larry Niven's 1970 novel Ringworld, the stasis box from Niven's 1968 story There is a Tide and the nullentropy bin from Frank Herbert's 1984 novel Heretics of Dune.
Thanks to reader Erik Glenn for mentioning this item in comments.
"...Jubal, tell me about the black bubbles. The... what did you call them?"
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'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
