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"My feeling is that the chance of our surviving into the twenty-first century as working civilization is less than fifty percent but greater than zero."
- Isaac Asimov
 |
| Pocket Universe | ||
| A created, separate space within the normal space of the universe. |
A unique, early use of this term and idea.
| He'd evidently put aside the small contrivance I'd last seen him working on, and he'd made a gadget—a diamagnet or whatever it ought to be called—a thing that closed space around itself in a pocket universe when it was turned on—that was extendible. |
| Technovelgy from Pocket Universes,
by Murray Leinster. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1946 Additional resources -
|
A bit of pseudoscience:
I slipped the paper-clip on it and stretched
it between the thumb and forefinger of my
hand. Then — feeling very foolish— I made
two ink-spots on the rubber. They were a
couple of inches from each other, with the
paper-clip in between.
The paper-clip represented the copper-glass-wire contrivance, and the ink-spots
two arbitrary places on the table. Then I
twisted the paper-clip so that it wound up
the rubber band about itself. It stretched.
The ink-spots approached each other. Presently they touched. Then I let go the paperclip and everything slipped back. They were
far apart again, with the clip in between.
That was it, exactly. Einstein has proved
that space is elastic. The rubber band was
also elastic. When the paper-clip — representing the weird object on the work-table —
wrapped the rubber band which represented
space about itself, why, presently there
wasn’t any rubber band or space between
the two dots. But when I released it, everything went back to normal and there was
space and a metal object between them.
The diamagnet wrapped space about it-
self. It absorbed space. The reason one’s
eyes hurt when looking at the place where
space had been absorbed was that they tried
to focus impossibly. Objects behind the vanished gadget were nearer than objects which
weren’t behind it. They hadn’t moved, of
course. But a certain amount of space — of distance — had been removed.
Compare to the worldcraft bubbles from Philip K Dick's The Trouble With Bubbles (1953).
So I went over to the table where Santos
wrote up his notes and picked up a rubber
band and a paper-clip. It was a red rubber
band, I remember.
This term was used in a spiritual sense in the late nineteenth century.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Pocket Universes
More Ideas
and Technology by Murray Leinster
Tech news articles related to Pocket Universes
Tech news articles related to works by Murray Leinster
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| First Trips To Mars Announced By Elon Musk |
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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.'
