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"the [science fiction] writer should be able to convince the reader (and himself) that the wonders he is describing really can come true...and that gets tricky when you take a good, hard look at the world around you."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Mother Ship | ||
| A large spacecraft that serves as home base for other (usually smaller) ships. |
Many authors have used this expression and concept; however, as far as I know, this is the first use of the expression "mother ship" and the first use of the concept.
| There will have to be some place for the operator of this ship to sleep and eat. I think the easiest way to solve that is to have a large fleet of mother ships—ships with a twenty-man crew, but still very active, and very deadly. |
| Technovelgy from The Black Star Passes,
by John W. Campbell. Published by Amazing Stories in 1930 Additional resources -
|
This term became a favorite of writers and readers alike. In his 1932 story Revolt of the Star Men, Raymond Z. Gallun wrote:
From Triplanetary (1934) by “Doc” Smith:
Another example, from Seed of the Arctic Ice, a 1939 story by H.G. Winter:
Nevertheless he looked longingly at the emergency space-boat hugging close to the hull of its mother ship, and fitted so admirably into her streamlining.
“As if contemptuous of any weapons the lifeboat might wield, the mother ship simply defended herself from the attacking beams, in much the same fashion as a wildcat mother wards off the claws and teeth of her spitting, snarling kitten who is resenting a touch of needed maternal discipline.“
Ken turned on her full twenty-four knots, zoomed above the dark bulk of the slower mother ship, whose light-beams flashed across him for a second, and then straightened out in a long, slight-angled dive after the great black bodies ahead.
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'The crawling... object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
'Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses...'
'You couldn't have the capstone without the pyramid to hold it up.'
'the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers...'
I'm hoping that this procedure becomes a normal part of medical practice!
'... nothing was perfected until M. Pantalon announced the completion of his automatic valet.'
'...its streets were of remarkable width, with few or no buildings so high as mosques, churches, State-offices, or palaces in Tellurian cities.'
