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"I'm very taken by mythology. I read it at a very early age and kept on reading it. Before I discovered science fiction I was reading mythology."
- Roger Zelazny
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| Space-Strain Battery | ||
| Storing energy in space itself. |
More of Campbell's ingenuity.
| “Morey has a new system, and he applied it with amazing results. We have discovered a means for giving any one of the twenty coefficients of space any value we want.
“To do this, we are straining space out of its normal condition, and the usual condition of such strain creeps up. We have to use energy to do it, and in thus straining space, we are storing energy in it. Of course, we have stored energy as space strain for hundreds of years, the induction coil, the condenser and gravity all represent energy stored in space as a strain. The more we follow this mathematical discussion, the more it seems that all energy in the universe is but strain in space: that is, there is no matter, merely energy strain, in space: that there is energy only because space is strained there. “But, be that as it may, we have a new means of storing energy, and that is more to our point, the means so affects space, that it changes the speed of light, changes the limiting speed of the universe. We can go as fast as we want, for the limit, about us, is changed, by our curving space in a new way. “The system is fairly obvious. Remember a torusshaped induction coil encloses all its magnetic field within it, the torus, or ‘doughnut’ coil, has a perfectly enclosed magnetic field. |
| Technovelgy from Islands of Space,
by John W. Campbell. Published by Amazing Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the solid power from Revolt on the Tenth World (1940) by Edmond Hamilton, the shipstone from Robert Heinlein's 1982 novel Friday, and the kink springs from The Calorie Man (2005), by Paolo Bacigalupi.
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Tech news articles related to works by John W. Campbell
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'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'
'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'
