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"I think we're still on that topic, still trying to figure out what computers are, how they change us, why we use them."
- Neal Stephenson
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| Etheric Propulsion-Vibrations | ||
| Faster-than-light travel. |
| It was in a wild longing for new adventure that the three had left in their new cruiser of revolutionary design. Wearied by the boredom of the solar system’s tame interplanetary traffic, they had started toward the hitherto unreached stars on a voyage of discovery and adventure. Their cruiser, driven by etheric propulsion-vibrations which it projected behind it, could attain speeds many times the speed of light itself. It had super-concentrated supplies and almost inexhaustible power, and thus the three could expect in it to visit the universe’s greatest stars. Now the first goal of their voyage, the nearest star, was in sight, as they gazed toward Alpha Centauri and its attendant planets. |
| Technovelgy from The Star-Roamers,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Weird Tales in 1933 Additional resources -
|
It's not really clear whether they are proceeding through normal space, or some sort of hyperspace. Whatever kind of space it is, it's very similar to guiding a boat through the water:
The cruiser heeled dizzily in space as it answered the wheel. Crisscrossing gas-globes hurtled through space where it had just been, and as one of these globes of gas touched a darting oval ship that was too slow in escaping its path, March saw the ship crumbled to fragments by the globe of gas! As he swerved the cruiser with instinctive swiftness, he heard a ay from Newell, another from Connor.
Given the speeds of sfnal space ships, any attempt to maneuver them would put unbearable forces on anyone inside unless inertia were somehow canceled. I can't think of another instance in sf that putting the wheel over results in the space ship "heeling" as a boat would do in the water.
Compare to these propulsion systems: Light Pressure Propulsion (1867),
apergy (1880),
Beam-Powered Propulsion (1931),
Granton motor (1933),
Vibration-Propelled Cruiser (1928),
geodynes (1936),
ion drive (1947),
Planetary Propulsion-Blasts (1934),
stardrive (1953),
solar sail (light sail) (1962),
Lyle drive (1961),
laser cannon (1966),
Bussard ramjet (1976),
asymptotic drive (1976),
Interstellar Laser Propulsion System (1985).
Space about them was suddenly alive with strange, dark oval ships! March, even as he whirled over the cruiser’s wheel in answer to Newell's startled cry of warning, was aware that from the rushing ships small globular clouds of white gas were speeding toward them! The scores of oval ships were attacking them!
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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.'
