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"The first thing that's wrong with being a science-fiction writer today is that the present has caught up with the future and surpassed it."
- Peter Watts
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| Water Pool Cushions Acceleration | ||
| The use of water to cushion and protect against extreme ship accelerations. |
As far as I know, this is an early reference to this idea in American science fiction.
A large, lightly loaded freighter heads to Mars, carrying executives and a large tank of sea water for use in a chemical plant. Duke Stetson decides to take a swim.
| The moment his body sank into the water, the excess weight he was carrying slipped off. Floating in the water, the effect was the same as though he was on Earth, for the water buoyed him up perfectly.
Suddenly there came a crash... the rockets, without control, opened up to full. Rocket motors, designed to produce an acceleration four times gravity on the ship when loaded to capacity, broke loose when the ship was practically empty... the ship rocketed forward under an acceleration seven and three-quarters times the gravity of Earth. Stetson lapsed into unconsciousness almost instantly as the enormous acceleration weight pressed down on him. But the water he floated in saved him from death.
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| Technovelgy from The Derelicts of Ganymede,
by John W. Campbell. Published by Wonder Stories in 1932 Additional resources -
|
See water springs from From the Earth to the Moon (1867) by Jules Verne.
Compare to the cider press from Double Star (1956) by Robert Heinlein and the acceleration-tank from Triplanetary (1934) by E.E. 'Doc' Smith.
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'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
