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"SF is a controlled way to think and dream about the future."
- Gregory Benford
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| Gravity Well | ||
| If you visualize spacetime as a flat, elastic plane, a planet will deform it, and it sits at the bottom of its own hole. |
| He was the pilot and engineer, the only other Terrestrial on Mercury. When you dove this far down into the sun's monstrous gravitational well, you couldn't take a big crew along. |
| From Life Cycle,
by Poul Anderson. Published by Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1957 Additional resources -
|
This expression quickly became a favorite of veteran sf writers; Heinlein, Clarke and Niven used it within a few years. Here's Niven using it as the subject of a short story, At the Bottom of a Hole (1966):
"The hole." Garner knew enough Belters to have learned a little of their
slang.
"The very one. His first instinct must have been to change course.
Belters learn to avoid gravity wells. A man can get killed half a dozen
ways coming too close to a hole. A good autopilot will get him safely
around it, or program an in-and-out spin, or even land him at the bottom,
God forbid. But miners don't carry good autopilots. They carry cheap
autopilots, and they stay clear of holes."
More recently, Charles Stross uses it in Accelerando (2005):
"He must have been on course for Luna when we found him. Ceres was behind
him with the radar. Our ships were ahead of him, matching course at two
gee. His mining ship wouldn't throw more than point five gee, so
eventually they'd pull alongside him no matter what he did. Then he
noticed Mars was just ahead of him."
“Mars is just dumb mass at the bottom of a gravity well; there isn't even a biosphere there.”
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Then some unknown race had chanced upon the dreamers and decided to 'help them out.'
'... you had your trademark Lucky Dragon Global Interactive Video Column outside.'
'It's an Indian Air Force drone; its solar cells could power an entire farm.'
'... we were supposed to be forming five unit composites first."
'We send our eyes on their appointed rounds, and they can hover or soar or back up...'
'Light from the sun hit those little spheres and bounced.'
'... the two pairs of waldoes in the screen followed in exact, simultaneous parallelism.'
