We're gonna travel faster than light so do up your overcoat tight

[austin_dern]

There are only a few pleasures like super-science space opera from people who seem at some point to have encountered actual science but not to have any particularly deep interest in it, eg, John W Campbell's Invaders From The Infinite. So Arcot, Wade, and Morey set off for a kerspillion light-years away to meet aliens from another dimension or something. I don't mean to be vague, but they talk of the surprisingly small number of lifeforms in the many universes, but seem to be going around galaxies. When these stories were written galaxies were still sometimes called island universes, and probably if I read carefully I could figure it out but does it matter? Even if I did pin down a detail the characters, who are always busy when off-camera thinking up new rays, would whip up another ray and escape the narrative block anyway.

Our Heroes end up 80,000 years in the past by some accident probably involving rays, but they zip ahead with only a few pauses to set off the legends of Hercules and the Egyptian gods. They get really excited about how they could see the First Battle of Bull Run if only they knew just when it was. (Engineers. Tch. Without leaving my bedroom I think I could set my hand on four books giving the dates for both battles.) Certainly if you could drop in at any event in human history 1st Bull Run is a natural point of interest. After that catastrophic battle it was only three more years until the Union realized the Civil War was going to be long and difficult, and four years for the Confederacy to realize the same.

And nobody in Our Heroes' native time finds it odd they accidentally travelled back 80,000 years. These things just happen. You get the feeling everyone in this world always wears inertio-fluxation jet-packs to leap out a window and fly to other floors rather than wait for the elevators, which are out of service four times a week due to molecular vibrations from the 62nd dimensional universe galaxy anyway. It'd be a fun universe to live in if there weren't so many billions casually killed. But hey, a normal trip to another universe could get you a chance to see the First Battle of Bull Run, isn't that at least as good as avoiding unspeakably massive civilian deaths? Somebody call Brainaic-5 and see if he's stopped Computo yet.

Trivia: Gemini VI-A got its radar lock on Gemini VII at a distance of 268 miles. Source: Deke! Donald K Slayton, Michael Cassutt.

Currently Reading: Invaders From The Infinite, John W Campbell.

Comments

[spaceroo.livejournal.com]

It's only vaguely on-topic, but... just a few weeks ago I stumbled across a news item about the EmDrive (http://www.emdrive.com/), a scientifically-questionable (sort of goes without saying) attempt at a Reactionless drive funded in part by a grant from the UK government. In order to get the Great Unwashed Masses perspective on the thing I looked it up in Wikipedia, and of course from there followed the link to the "Dean Drive" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_drive), and from there to the John W. Campbell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Campbell) entry. He certainly adopted some, well, interesting beliefs in his cranky old age. (Hieronymus machines? Uhm, yeah.)

In reading more about the subject I was amused by Jerry Pournelle's simple procedure for testing a reactionless drive (http://www.jerrypournelle.com/sciences/dean.html), which boils down to: "Put it on a swing. See if it hovers to one side, instead of rocking back and forth. Throw a piece of plastic over it and see if it still works. If it does, make your call to the Nobel Prize committee. Otherwise, back to the drawing board."

[xolo.livejournal.com]

IIRC, people were still fighting over the Dean Drive in the mid 70s in the Analog letters column.

The Heironymus Machine I have trouble dismissing out of hand. There are way too many bizarre, yet consistent, reports from presumably sane and intelligent people, many of whom were skeptics when they built one. The claims being made are completely retarded, yet people keep describing the same effects. I keep thinking I'm going to build one.

[spaceroo.livejournal.com]

I think Heironymus machines work about as well as dowsing sticks, in the sense that they work wonderfully well at causing otherwise sane and rational people to fall deep into a state of self-delusion. What the Classical Heironymus Machine "does" (http://www.wdjensen123.com/hieronymus/Report1.htm) is so fuzzily specified, including among other things "detecting the type and quantity of unknown materials, detecting and diagnosing energy flaws in animals and plants, locating hidden materials, finding lost objects, measuring vital signs of remote individuals, performing dowsing, chakra healing, and radiasthesia", that there's basically no possible way to prove that it's not doing, well, "something", and thus doesn't work. If I point my Heironymus machine at a nearby houseplant and my "Stick-Pad" twiddling tells me there's an "Energy Flaw" in it what can you possibly do to convince me I'm wrong? Science doesn't even recognize the existence of "Eloptic Energy", so there's no non-Heironymus apparatus you can aim at the same houseplant as a calibration point to verify the proper working of my machine.

Unfortunately intelligence and a capacity for self-deception aren't mutually exclusive personality traits. I'd probably believe in Heironymus machines myself if I didn't have my trusty bullshit detector always at my side. Most things having to do with psychic powers bury the needle. ;^)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite sure how long it took Campbell to get into his Cranky Old Age, honestly. I mean, yes, he did some great science writing in that 18-part tour of the solar system. But when it gets into his Serious Science Fiction there's often a few dollops of honest study and a good amount of hand-waving, and then you get into his Space Operatic dramas and a lot of stories, written or commissioned, where he'd just throw in every silly idea he had and see if anything sticks.

I think he might always have been slightly nuts, and just figured for a while that whipping up his fans on tales of how he's into The Real Science Fiction is good marketing, even as he was having his writers pitch tales of psychic warriors, super-fluids beyond those of mortal substances, and mutants exploring the next evolutionary steps for humanity ... never mind traditional yet equally nonsensical notions like faster-than-light travel, time travel, and abundant spaceship energy often with power shortages on the ground.