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"Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful."
- Philip K. Dick
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| Superluminal | ||
| Faster than the speed of light. |
As far as I know, the first use in a science fiction story.
| Slowly across the micro-universe they were weaving the copper webs which would define the positions of entry and termination of their superluminal jump through tachyon space. |
| Technovelgy from Patterns of Chaos,
by Colin Kapp. Published by Worlds of IF in 1972 Additional resources -
|
No less a science fiction luminary than Isaac Asimov used this word in a gritty 1969 article The Luxon Wall in Fantasy and Science Fiction:
The earliest mention I can find is in Seeing Things. The Scientist and Spiritualism by Rupert Hall in Pearson’s Magazine (US) February 1909.
Of interest (to me, anyway) is the fact that the word derives from "lumen" which is the unit of luminous flux, but can also be derived from a latin word meaning "opening" into a central cavity or interior space.
It turns out, as you can see for yourself if you try a few random examples, that for any object traveling at superluminal velocities, the proper-mass is imaginary.
He finds that the manifestations of the mediums are not progressive, but devolutionary, infra- and not super-normal, sub- and never super-luminal.
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Tech news articles related to works by Colin Kapp
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'...the rocket’s landing-arms automatically unfolded.'
'...points and patches of light... sliding all over their faces in a programmed manner that had been designed to foil facial recognition systems.'
'...the combined Wind-Suncatcher, like a spray of tulips mounted fanwise.'
'I went to the control room where the three other men were manipulating their mechanical men.'
'The low-slung monorail car, straddling its single track, bored through the shadows on a slowly rising course.'
'It was a smooth ovoid floating a few inches from the floor...'
'... he thrust in his charging arm to replenish his store of energy.'
'...the terrible Jovian gravity that made each movement an effort.'
