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"In 1970 I found little difficulty staying 30 years ahead of the man in the street, and now I find it difficult to stay 18 months ahead of the man on the street."
- Vernor Vinge
 |
| Electrono-Mirror | ||
| Focuses the sun's rays on a planetary surface for terraforming purposes. |
| Uranus boasted its tiny colonies; Neptune was now being studied for a colonization project. And far Pluto was under constant electrono-mirror bombardment that its icy surface might some day be cleared. |
| Technovelgy from The Day We Celebrate,
by Nelson S. Bond. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1941 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the synchrophased power beams from Murray Leinster's The Propagandist (1947), the spot light of heat from Niven/Pournelle/Flynn's Fallen Angels (1991) and Clifford Simak's solar energy beam from Masquerade (1941).
For those keeping track, this story was in the January, 1941 issue of Astounding, while Theodore Sturgeon's orbiting mirror was in the February issue, in a clever short story called Completely Automatic.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Day We Celebrate
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Tech news articles related to The Day We Celebrate
Tech news articles related to works by Nelson S. Bond
| Space Weather To Universe Weather |
| That's MOXIE! Terraforming Mars Baby Steps |
| Solar X-Flares Disrupt North American Radio And Navigation |
| Restructure An Asteroid, Spin It, Get A 'Space Habitat' With Gravity? |
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'The crawling, exploring object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
'It radiates outward in a cone which, by the time it has reached our section of space, is many lightyears across.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock.'
'... with a weird simulation of life, the ten forked ends of each arm commenced a rattling pressing of the buttons.'
'Each of the four areas is enclosed by a sonic wall...'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'If you surf over a bump... If you surf over a pothole...'
'Then the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and they stood an instant transfixed...'
'Noiselessly, on rubber-tired wheels, they journeyed...'
