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"I've taken some stick for passages in Altered Carbon which people complained had sickened them, but then violence should be sickening."
- Richard Morgan
 |
| Gravity Neutralizing Disks | ||
| Two plates between which Earth's gravitational influence is cancelled out. |
These gravity neutralizing disks are necessary for Fessenden's creation of a miniature universe in his lab.
| It consisted of two twelve-foot metal disks with grid-like surfaces, one on the floor and one on the ceiling directly over the other. They were connected by cables to the electrical machinery, and their grid-like surfaces shone faintly with wan blue light or force.
Fessenden walked over to the thing and motioned calmly toward the blue-glowing disks in floor and ceiling. These disks, Bradley, neutralize all the ordinary gravitational forces of earth in the space between them. "What?" I cried, astonished. I stepped forward, was about to thrust my hand between the two disks to test the assertion. But Fessenden held me back. "Don't try that," he warned. "The human body is accustomed to earth's gravitation, and is inwardly braced against it. If you were to step between those disks, out of earth's gravitation, your body would explode from its own inward pressure..." |
| Technovelgy from Fessenden's Worlds,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Weird Tales in 1937 Additional resources -
|
Hamilton was something of a child prodigy; he started college at 14, but quit three years later. If he had stayed in a bit longer, he might have been able to distinguish between the force of gravity and the force applied to our bodies by air pressure.
This is an interesting predecessor to the sleeping plates that Larry Niven wrote about.
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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.'
