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"As a writer, I don't want to chew my cud. I don't want to have to spit out and regurgitate the same stuff again."
- Harlan Ellison
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| Half-Sphere Force Field | ||
| A protective force field that can manifest even as a half-sphere. |
Anybody can make a spherical force field, but I enjoyed this brief excursion into solid geometry from Heinlein.
| There flickered into being over the bench, hanging in the air unsupported, a silvery ball some two feet across... it made Don think of a Christmas tree ornament. ...Conrad bent over the controls. "Act two," he announced. "We now cancel out half of the locus..." Another shape took being, a perfect half-sphere otherwise like the last. |
| From Between Planets,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1951 Additional resources -
|
It is invulnerable to harm, and ordinary processes (like a burning cigarette) inside the sphere are uninterrupted. And how does it work?
"...There is no popular way to explain it. If you were willing to spend five hard years with me, working up through the math, I could probably bring you up to the same level of ignorance and confusion that I enjoy. Some of the tensor equations involved are, to put it mildly, unique..."
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Science Fiction
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With each successive print, our model needed to incorporate more structural ingredients to minimize print failures.
'... Wendis stared thoughtfully at the brilliant lines on the spectroscope screen.'
'A special spot-wavex scrambler also caused his televised image, in the area immediately about his lips, to mouth the vowels and consonants beautifully.'
'... it was as if the upper part had been removed, like a cut deck of cards.'
Sumomo will get those office workers into good shape!
'... who let their handbag computers carry all the conversation.'
'Thus it came about that the search for a planetiferous sun near a white dwarf star was not unduly prolonged...'
'He led me down the Hall of Portraits to the ego-likeness of the Duke Leto Atreides.'
