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"I'm a farm boy. It's very interesting; you can detect self-starting characteristics in this society and they are strongest among people who have had some kind of rural upbringing and a very impressionable stage."
- Frank Herbert
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| Wall in the Air | ||
| An invisible barrier that protects an entire island or city. |
As far as I know, this is the earliest example of this idea in science fiction.
| They only could tell us that they had been taught from the Sun Island, a far-off land of the sea. Sometimes, they said, the tide was low and we could walk on dry rocks to the isle. Sometimes there was a “wall in the air.” Then no one could get there...
“That is the Sun Island. The angel-man lives there.”
Before the bird people slept he ordered the construction of a small, strong stone house, with two great cellars stored with fuel, food and oil. This was built as near the island as possible. The glow of brightness made continual day around it, but warmth hardly penetrated the impassable wall in the air... “This day only the wall in the air is removed. The bird people are asleep. I can take you there quickly!” |
| Technovelgy from Rondah, or Thirty-Three Years in a Star,
by Florence Carpenter Dieudonné. Published by Not Known in 1887 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the lanson screen from The Lanson Screen (1936) by Leo Zagat, the spindizzy from Cities in Flight (1957) by James Blish, the langston field from The Mote in God's Eye (1974) by Larry Niven (w/J. Pournelle) and the bobble from The Peace War (1984) by Vernor Vinge.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Rondah, or Thirty-Three Years in a Star
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and Technology by Florence Carpenter Dieudonné
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'Compounds devised by the biochemists for the rapid building of bone...'
'The car faltered as the external command came to brake...'
'It is about the size and shape of a kitchen stool, gyro-stabilized...'
'The greatest problem of all was the elimination of the human element of braking together with its inevitable time lag.'
'Across the ancient sea floor a dozen tall, blue-sailed Martian sand ships floated, like blue smoke.'
'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
