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"The answer to the problem of information overload on the Net is reputations… engineer a system called a reputation server."
- Neal Stephenson
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| Paragravity | ||
| Artificial gravity. |
This is the first use of the term.
| Paragravity had burst the prison of a million years, to set men free of Earth.
Maxim-Gore, when he discovered paragravity, was merely seeking a selective force to extract the power isotope from native uranium. The force-fields of sunspots, hurling out jets of flaming hydrogen for hundreds of thousands of kilometers against solar radiation, gave him the clue to paragravity - a force existing in the unexplored region between the phenomena of magnetism and gravitation, and sharing some of the characteristics of each. ...the directional space drive; the negative safety field; the peegee reducer, that broke up compounds by direct selective attraction, yielding oxygen to breathe and iron for construction out of common hematite; the peegee terraforming unit, that held men and his precious blanket of air to any tiny rock - those were all unexpected gifts, amazing even the engineer. |
| Technovelgy from Collision Orbit,
by Jack Williamson. Published by Astounding in 1942 Additional resources -
|
For the first use of the idea see artificial gravity from Brigands of the Moon (1930) by Ray Cummings. Published the same year was the artificial gravity system from Last and First Men (1930) by Olaf Stapledon.
The most practical solution to the problem is provided in city of space from The Prince of Space by Williamson (this article also provides a quote from The Problem of Space Travel - The Rocket Motor, written by Herman Potočnik and published in 1928 in German).
Compare to the Chardion Field from Star of Dreams (1941), also by Williamson.
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'... an artificial intelligence equal to the human.'
'Rayno folded up the microterm and tucked it back inside his jumper.'
'Nemourlon armor of reasonable weight resists penetration by most fragments and any bullet that is not both reasonably heavy and fairly high-velocity.'
'Several thousand of them formed the positioning grid on the rubble pile.'
'Its slack walls tightened, bulged, were crossed by ripples and waves of movement.'
'Norman... had never ridden any motorized device that lacked onboard steering and balance systems.'
You will note that HG Wells also figured out the aspect ratio of the future!
'As though a switch had been turned off, the pain stopped...'
'At the ringside opposite them a table had been removed to make room for a large transparent plastic capsule on wheels.'
