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"None of us, no matter what continent or island or ice cap, asked to be born in the first place, and that even somebody as old as I am, which is 80, only just got here."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
 |
| Curtain (Force Barrier) | ||
| An easily set-up protective force barrier. |
Interesting early use of the "force field" idea; note that the authors felt that the barrier needed wires to carry energy.
| The dripping jungle pressed its greyness close up against the interlacing net of copper filaments that was the Curtain, the apparently frail barrier around the liquid mud clearing of this outpost of Earth's commerce…
At last they were through the Curtain. Arnim turned, took something from the voluminous pocket of his waterproof. A tiny radio-transmitter, low-powered, sending only a long dash that varied completely in wave length for a half minute. The key to the Curtain—Penger pressed the button. A coruscation of tiny flashes snapped through the wind-tossed filaments. The power was on—that apparently frail barrier hummed now with the Grendon vibration. Britt could see the driven rain rebound from the invisible wall. Nothing, no human body, no Venusian dart, not even a high-powered electro-bullet could pass through the net. The station was safe, protected against all intrusion until the machines that produced the vibration were stilled by another pressure on the little instrument with its secret combination of frequencies. |
| Technovelgy from Venus Mines, Incorporated,
by Nat Schachner (w. AL Zagat). Published by Wonder Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
Compare with the force-field from John Campbell's 1931 story Islands of Space, the barrier from Robert Heinlein's 1940 novella Coventry and the Langston field from Niven and Pournelle's 1974 classic The Mote in God's Eye.
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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.'
