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"[Science fiction is] nightmares and visions, always outlined by the barely possible."
- Gregory Benford
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| Narrow Belt Climate | ||
| A sliver of a tidally-locked world that is inhabitable. |
This story was written in 1931; it was generally believed that the planet Mercury is tidally locked like the Moon, presenting one face to the sun.
| "...Where else is there to go-?" "Mercury!" "Larry! It has a terrible climate and is — oh — uncivilized. Besides, its government is unrecognized by the Tri-planetary Alliance. We'd be exiles in an awful land where we could never live in peace." "Honey — listen ! It's just the opposite. I've a very good friend, Chic Davis, who's captain of the Rocket III, one of the Tri-planetarian liners. He tells me Mercury is the finest of all the inhabited bodies. It's terrifically hot on the side always toward the sun and frigid on the other, but there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate — semi-tropical by earthly standards. And it's not uncivilized, but highly cultured... The huge blood-red disc of the sun shone hotly at the horizon, its almost horizontal rays making of the city a motley of sweltering high lights and dark shadows. Rose tinted mists hung low over all, effectually obscuring the heavens above. It was always thus in Luzan, the sun never leaving the horizon entirely, but circling it once in every, eighty-eight earth days and alternately rising to a point that exposed the lower rim of the enormous disc, then sinking to a point where the topmost edge just peeped through the mists above the undulating line of demarcation between land and sky. |
| Technovelgy from Too Many Boards!,
by Harl Vincent. Published by Amazing Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
Compare to ribbon world from The Mule (1945), part of Foundation and Empire, by Isaac Asimov.
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Tech news articles related to Too Many Boards!
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Narrow Belt Climate-related
news articles:
- The New Habitable Zones Include Asimov's Ribbon Worlds
| 'If Anyone Is Watching Earth...' |
| Cloud Of Space Rubbish From China's Long March Rocket |
| ESA's Draco To Study Heat Of Reentry |
| The United States Space Academy Is Official |
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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...'
