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"[Science fiction is] an integration of the mood and attitude of science (the objective universe) with the fears and hopes that spring from the unconscious."
- Gregory Benford
 |
| Gravity Well | ||
| If you visualize spacetime as a flat, elastic plane, a planet will deform it, and it sits at the bottom of its own hole. |
| He was the pilot and engineer, the only other Terrestrial on Mercury. When you dove this far down into the sun's monstrous gravitational well, you couldn't take a big crew along. |
| Technovelgy from Life Cycle,
by Poul Anderson. Published by Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1957 Additional resources -
|
This expression quickly became a favorite of veteran sf writers; Heinlein, Clarke and Niven used it within a few years. Here's Niven using it as the subject of a short story, At the Bottom of a Hole (1966):
"The hole." Garner knew enough Belters to have learned a little of their
slang.
"The very one. His first instinct must have been to change course.
Belters learn to avoid gravity wells. A man can get killed half a dozen
ways coming too close to a hole. A good autopilot will get him safely
around it, or program an in-and-out spin, or even land him at the bottom,
God forbid. But miners don't carry good autopilots. They carry cheap
autopilots, and they stay clear of holes."
More recently, Charles Stross uses it in Accelerando (2005):
"He must have been on course for Luna when we found him. Ceres was behind
him with the radar. Our ships were ahead of him, matching course at two
gee. His mining ship wouldn't throw more than point five gee, so
eventually they'd pull alongside him no matter what he did. Then he
noticed Mars was just ahead of him."
“Mars is just dumb mass at the bottom of a gravity well; there isn't even a biosphere there.”
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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.'
