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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
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| Gravograph | ||
| A graphical representation of gravitational fields. |
Approaching the Sargasso of space, an area of space where the gravitational influences of the planets cancel each other out, the ship's crew monitor the situation with their gravograph.
| On the third ship-day Kent and Captain Crain stood in the pilot-house behind Liggett, who sat at the now useless rocket-tube controls. Their eyes were on the big glass screen of the gravograph. The black dot on it that represented their ship was crawling steadily toward the bright red circle that stood for the dead-area....
They watched silently until the dot had crawled over the circle's red line, heading toward its center. "Well, we're in at last," Kent commented. "There seems to be no change in anything, either." Crain pointed to the instrument-panel. "Look at the gravitometers." Kent did. "All dead! No gravitational pull from any direction—no, that one shows a slight attraction from ahead!" "Then gravitational attraction of some sort does exist in the dead-area after all!" Liggett exclaimed. "You don't understand," said Crain. "That attraction from ahead is the pull of the wreck-pack at the dead-area's center." "And it's pulling the Pallas toward it?" Kent exclaimed. Crain nodded. "We'll probably reach the wreck-pack in two more ship-days." |
| Technovelgy from The Sargasso of Space,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Astounding Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
Read the discussion of weightlessness in Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, and see how he was the first to describe the idea of planetary gravities canceling each other out (in fiction, anyway).
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
