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
"The best fuzzy rules, the best knowledge, deal with the turning points of the system. If a race-car driver teaches you how to drive, you don't need him to show you how to drive on the straightaway. It's how he handles the curves that matters."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Observation Room Recreation Center | ||
| A vast internal space in a space station, often used for exercise and amusement. |
The discipline needed on a space station was extreme, so recreation spaces were important.
| The observation-room was vast. Two hundred feet
across and high, and six hundred feet wide, and practically without a ceiling. All four walls were floor.
Here was the center of the Power Planet. Here were
the largest of all the ports which look out upon the appalling emptiness which surrounds it. Here, too, were
the doors into the needle-like spires which show on all
the pictures of the Power Planet — those two-thousand-foot shafts which jut out from its exact center. From
the shaft on the sunward side, one may look out over the
whole of the bright-side disk. And from the spire on
the shadow side one sees exactly nothing, unless the
monster searchlights are turned on. They will illuminate the dark side to its farthest edge, though, and are
used in case of needed repairs to the outer skin. From
the dark-side spire the only thing which shows that the
blackness of the disk is not nothingness itself is that
faintly luminous streak of pure Power, a hundred yards
across, which goes stabbing across illimitable space to
the spinning Earth, far-distant...
A visiphone record was going on one of the visiphonographs. A girl’s face, quite incredibly realistic in its stereoscopic projection, looked flirtatiously out at emptiness as she sang. . . . And nearly buckled against the wall was that contrivance little Skeptsky liked to fool with, here in the center of the disk where even artificial gravity was negligible — little compressed-air tanks that he strapped to his shoulders, with rocket-nozzles attached. He could fly lightly all about the place, and did, explaining blandly that he was practising at being an angel. It was horribly lonely in the vast open space that was supposed to be a recreation-center and observatory, where weight was non-existent. |
| Technovelgy from The Power Planet,
by Murray Leinster. Published by Amazing Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
George O. Smith describes a similar space in the center of the Venus Equilateral Relay Station in his 1942 story QRM: Interplanetary:
Arden jumped. She sailed upward, and as she passed through the opening, Channing caught her by one arm and stopped her flight. “At that speed you’d go right on across,” he said.
She looked up, and there about two hundred feet overhead she could see the opposite wall.
Channing snapped on the lights. They were in a room two hundred feet in diameter and three hundred feet long. “We’re at the center of the station,” Channing informed her. “Beyond that bulkhead is the air lock. On the other side of the other bulkhead, we have the air plants, the storage spaces, and several cubic inches of machinery.”
“Inches?” asked Arden. Then she saw that he was fooling.
“Come on,” he said. He took her by the hand and with a kick he propelled himself along on a long, curving course to the opposite side of the inner cylinder. He gained the opposite bulkhead as well.
“Now, that’s what I call traveling,” said Arden. “But my tummy goes whoosh, whoosh, every time we cross the center.
RF Starzl describes a somewhat more utilitarian space in Hornets of Space (1930):
There were hundreds of passengers walking around between the tall columns of satin-finished metal that radiated like the spokes of a wheel from the central core. They looked like flies walking inside the rim of a wheel two hundred feet in diameter.
Compare to the battleroom from Ender's Game (1985) by Orson Scott Card.
Channing looked up the little flight of stairs that led to the innermost level. He winked at Arden and jumped. He passed up through the opening easily. “Jump,” he commanded. “Don’t use the stairs!”
Compare to the more sophisticated amusements available in the Star Trek: The Next Generation recreation room holodeck.
(Center space from 'QRM: Interplanetary' by George O. Smith)
The rotation of the ship on its longitudinal axis (strangely reminiscent of those ancient fighting shells) served in lieu of gravity to hold objects to the floor...
Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Power Planet
More Ideas
and Technology by Murray Leinster
Tech news articles related to The Power Planet
Tech news articles related to works by Murray Leinster
| Mechazilla Arms Catch A Falling Starship, But Check Out SF Landing-ARMS |
| Solar-Powered Space Trains On The Moon |
| JWST Finds Bucking Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 |
| First Trips To Mars Announced By Elon Musk |
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 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.'
