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"Science fiction operates a little bit like science itself, in principle. You've got thousands of people exploring ideas, putting forth their own hypotheses. Most of them are dead wrong; a few stand the test of time; everything looks kind of quaint in hind"
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Lazarus Long and Andy Libby are conning the New Frontiers, the enormous spaceship they had just stolen, on a collision course with the sun.
The term "astrogate" is also used:
If you think about it, this is a term that sounds better than it actually is if you look at the root words. The word "astrogate" is modeled on "navigate" - navigate literally means navi+gate or ship+drive (or lead). So a navigator is a driver of a ship. "Astrogate", on the other hand, is astro+gate or star+driver - I don't think they piloted any stars in this book.
It might make more sense from an Earth-bound perspective; as Methuselah's Children mentions, the space vessel New Frontiers looks like a star from the surface of the Earth. "Odd," commented Lazarus, "Orion seems to have added a fourth star to his belt."
As far as dates are concerned, there is a slight problem, which is that two versions of this story were published. The earlier, shorter version was published in 1941; since I've been using the 1958 version I've given the date you see above. This term probably appears in the earlier version, but I have no way to check. Anyone? The first use of the basic word "astrogation" was probably Lasser's Conquest of Space, from 1931.
The word "astrogating" appears in The Venus Germ published in Wonder Stories in 1932 by R.F. Starzl and F. Pragnell:
Thanks to an anonymous reader who wrote in asking for clarification.
See also automatic navigator in A Matter of Size (1934) by Harry Bates, the
chart cabinet in One Against the Legion (1939) by Jack Williamson, the
pilot-robot in Collision Orbit (1941) also by Williamson, the
3D tank display in Triplanetary (1930) by 'Doc' Smith, and the
telechart in Crashing Suns (1928) by Edmond Hamilton. Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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