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"I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
 |
| Daisy Projector | ||
| Beam of energy penetrates the Heaviside layer to enable communication from planet to planet. |
The Heaviside layer is a layer of ionised gas occurring between 90km and 150 km above the ground — one of several layers in the Earth's ionosphere. It reflects medium-frequency radio waves.
Predicted by Oliver Heaviside (and Arthur Kennelly), its existence was essentially demonstrated by Marconi's transmission of radio waves beyond the horizon.
But would this layer prevent communications between the Earth and other planets? John Campbell wrote a story about men trapped on Ganymede with no way to communicate their whereabouts.
| Stetson had made a queer set up that looked something like a daisy ten feet across. The golden center, however, was a flattened copper dome, made of heavy metal, and attached to a tremendously heavy copper lead about two feet long. It was almost as great in diameter as it was in length. The end of this massive copper block was approximately an inch from a second plate of two-inch copper. This spread out in a bowl three feet in diameter.
Around the two-foot length was a curiously designed coil of rather heavy copper wire, insulated from the block on insulite pins. At the gap between the heavy lead and the copper bowl three magnets were placed, one hundred and twenty degrees apart. The petals of the daisy were made of thin metal plates, connected at rim and center, and insulated from the copper dome. The beam started out. After a very long time a sudden flash snapped out, and the beam was a solid column of energy stretching out to infinity, flowing bluish in the atmosphere... "Want to send a message to the home folks?" |
| Technovelgy from The Derelicts of Ganymede,
by John W. Campbell. Published by Wonder Stories in 1932 Additional resources -
|
The description may remind you of the stiletto beam from Earthlight (1955) by Arthur C. Clarke.
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'He had travelled the space-lanes of the solar system for the greater part of his life...'
'The dinner was excellent. It was completely vegetarian — grown in specially prepared gardens in this Moon base...'
'Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind.'
'It was a relief to enter one of the comfortable autos, whisper a direction down the tube, and just know that you would be taken to your destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest manner.'
'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
'The vast spinning sphere of Factory in the Sky loomed above and ahead of us, gleaming white against the unfathomable jet depths of surrounding space.'
'And if it doesn’t work,' inquired Lazarus, 'what does that make us? Sunspots?'
'The Dillard people had performed a miracle and put all the works in a girl-modeled case.'
'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
