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"[Science fiction] is the only kind of writing that allows you to look at the world we live in and change one piece at a time."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Superluminal | ||
| Faster than the speed of light. |
As far as I know, the first use in a science fiction story.
| Slowly across the micro-universe they were weaving the copper webs which would define the positions of entry and termination of their superluminal jump through tachyon space. |
| Technovelgy from Patterns of Chaos,
by Colin Kapp. Published by Worlds of IF in 1972 Additional resources -
|
No less a science fiction luminary than Isaac Asimov used this word in a gritty 1969 article The Luxon Wall in Fantasy and Science Fiction:
The earliest mention I can find is in Seeing Things. The Scientist and Spiritualism by Rupert Hall in Pearson’s Magazine (US) February 1909.
Of interest (to me, anyway) is the fact that the word derives from "lumen" which is the unit of luminous flux, but can also be derived from a latin word meaning "opening" into a central cavity or interior space.
It turns out, as you can see for yourself if you try a few random examples, that for any object traveling at superluminal velocities, the proper-mass is imaginary.
He finds that the manifestations of the mediums are not progressive, but devolutionary, infra- and not super-normal, sub- and never super-luminal.
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'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
