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"I think a lot of kids whose mental growth outruns their maturity gravitate to science fiction."
- Dan Simmons
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| Narrow Belt Climate | ||
| A sliver of a tidally-locked world that is inhabitable. |
This story was written in 1931; it was generally believed that the planet Mercury is tidally locked like the Moon, presenting one face to the sun.
| "...Where else is there to go-?" "Mercury!" "Larry! It has a terrible climate and is — oh — uncivilized. Besides, its government is unrecognized by the Tri-planetary Alliance. We'd be exiles in an awful land where we could never live in peace." "Honey — listen ! It's just the opposite. I've a very good friend, Chic Davis, who's captain of the Rocket III, one of the Tri-planetarian liners. He tells me Mercury is the finest of all the inhabited bodies. It's terrifically hot on the side always toward the sun and frigid on the other, but there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate — semi-tropical by earthly standards. And it's not uncivilized, but highly cultured... The huge blood-red disc of the sun shone hotly at the horizon, its almost horizontal rays making of the city a motley of sweltering high lights and dark shadows. Rose tinted mists hung low over all, effectually obscuring the heavens above. It was always thus in Luzan, the sun never leaving the horizon entirely, but circling it once in every, eighty-eight earth days and alternately rising to a point that exposed the lower rim of the enormous disc, then sinking to a point where the topmost edge just peeped through the mists above the undulating line of demarcation between land and sky. |
| Technovelgy from Too Many Boards!,
by Harl Vincent. Published by Amazing Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
Compare to ribbon world from The Mule (1945), part of Foundation and Empire, by Isaac Asimov.
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Tech news articles related to Too Many Boards!
Tech news articles related to works by Harl Vincent
Narrow Belt Climate-related
news articles:
- The New Habitable Zones Include Asimov's Ribbon Worlds
| SETI Suggests Prospecting The Solar System Without Landing |
| Cislunar Space And The Space Lanes of Golden Age Science Fiction |
| NASA Moonbase Update |
| The Solar Oberth Slingshot |
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'Space-sickness is one of the most unpleasant sensations that a human being can experience. Not all are subject to it...'
'...I saw a nice black heavy-looking cloud sailing by just now, and I can get the electrical machine out in five minutes to draw it down.'
'From a distance it could resolve the cosmic rays reflected from various substances.'
'The answer to the dumb student's prayer.'
'He had travelled the space-lanes of the solar system for the greater part of his life...'
'The dinner was excellent. It was completely vegetarian — grown in specially prepared gardens in this Moon base...'
'Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind.'
'It was a relief to enter one of the comfortable autos, whisper a direction down the tube, and just know that you would be taken to your destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest manner.'
'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
