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"I can remember when the first pulsars were discovered. I was able to go and sit down and listen to graduate students talking about what their theories, to explain what pulsars really were."
- Vernor Vinge
 |
| Space Phobia | ||
| When astronauts have had enough. |
| I'd picked up a nice phobia against space when the super-liner Lauri Ellu cracked up with four hundred passengers on my first watch as second engineer. I'd gotten free and into a suit, but after they rescued me, it had taken two years on the Moon before I could get up nerve for the shuttle back to Earth. And after eight years home, I should have let well enough alone. If I'd known anything about Pietro's expedition, I'd have wrapped myself in my phobia and loved it. |
| Technovelgy from Let 'em Breathe Space!,
by Lester del Rey. Published by Space Science Fiction in 1953 Additional resources -
|
Robert Heinlein described a variety of reasons that you might not enjoy space in his excellent 1939 short story Misfit:
"But if you behave yourself, and listen to the advice of the old spacemen, you'll come out of it strong and healthy, with a little credit stored up in the bank, and a lot of knowledge and experience that you wouldn't get in forty years on Earth. You'll be men, and you'll know it..."
Compare to space-sick from Ralph 124c 41 + (1911) by Hugo Gernsback, space madness from A Daring Trip to Mars (1931) by Max Valier, moon-terror from Star of Dreams (1941) by Jack Williamson, gravitation paralysis from The World With A Thousand Moons (1942) by Edmond Hamilton, Space Scurvy (Kenoalgia) from Sacred Martian Pig (1949) by Margaret Saint Clair and space phobia from Let 'em Breathe Space! (1953) by Lester del Rey.
"...We've got to play human fly on her for at least six months, no girls to date, no television, no recreation that you don't devise yourselves, and hard work every day. You'll get space sick, and so homesick you can taste it, and agoraphobia. If you aren't careful you'll get ray-burnt. Your stomach will act up, and you'll wish to God you'd never enrolled.
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'...Anything was possible in my imaginary environment.'
'Somewhere in space, a chrome and blue automobile raced the green light of Earth.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair...'
'We had discovered that metal was relatively impervious to the telepathic effect.'
'Detailed plans for the construction of the Gundstetter-Halone warp drive were flowing.'
'Do not waste your priceless company on the unappreciative folds of a sleep pod...'
'...so we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
