Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"If you have a gut response to a story, you are not responding to something new ..you are really responding to a story you were told when you were six or seven…"
- Samuel R. Delany
 |
| Dark Vapor Bubble | ||
| A kind of field that keeps an alien base provided with an atmosphere. |
This is an early description of the idea of a force field in a spherical shape, useful for bases in an alien atmosphere.
| It'was a scene^ from which even the normal air of Earth had vanished. In its stead was a giant hemispherical bubble of translucent black vapor, whose rounded top Was on a level with where he stood and whose curved sides met the basin wall twenty feet below him.
The great hemisphere of dark vapor looked as fragile as a soap-bubble, yet its gleaming walls never moved in the stiff breeze that rustled through the trees on the bain's rim. Inside the shimmering walls of misty black was a vast area of death. The thick growth of grass that had carpeted the basin floor was brown and sere, and dotted with the scattered bodies of night-flying birds and big, tropical moths. Small trees and bushes drooped limp and dead, as though blasted by lightning. Where the edges of the.great bubble met the basin walls the line between life and death was as sharply cut as though made by a knife. Every tree branch and palm frond was withered and dead from the point where it entered the vapor. In the center of the basin floor towered a tall mast of what looked like dark yellow crystal. It branched at the top in an intricate web of curved rods that suggested the skeleton of a giant umbrella, and it was apparently from the tips of these rods that the weird energy streamed to form the great black bubble of death. The compact mass of mechanism grouped around the base of the mast was the source of the high-pitched vibrations that pulsed in the air, but the glowing coils and spinning parts that made up the apparatus were so infin- itely complex and so utterly alien in their basic principles that Kellar could not even hazard a guess as to their method of operation. |
| Technovelgy from Man-Jewels for Xothar,
by H.G. Wells. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1936 Additional resources -
|
More details:
Their home planet is a giant world
they call Xothar, located deep in the
heart of the Dark Nebula in Orion.
Our astronomers have for years spec-
ulated as to the real nature of that
inconceivably-vast, opaque cloud. The
black bubble of death down in the
basin is a synthetic reproduction of
the material that composes the Dark
Nebula. It is neither gas, liquid, nor
solid, but a strange blending of electrical and chemical elements that form a tenuous variety of matter that is completely unknown to our science.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Man-Jewels for Xothar
More Ideas
and Technology by H.G. Wells
Tech news articles related to Man-Jewels for Xothar
Tech news articles related to works by H.G. Wells
| AI-THu Shapeshifting Transformer Home |
| With Mycotecture, We'll Just Grow The Space Habitats We Need |
| Vast Apartment Living Will Get Even More Vast |
| LiquidView Ersatz Windows, ala Philip K. Dick |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Science Fiction Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
'The crawling... object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
'Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses...'
'You couldn't have the capstone without the pyramid to hold it up.'
'the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers...'
I'm hoping that this procedure becomes a normal part of medical practice!
'... nothing was perfected until M. Pantalon announced the completion of his automatic valet.'
'...its streets were of remarkable width, with few or no buildings so high as mosques, churches, State-offices, or palaces in Tellurian cities.'
