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"At its best, SF is the medium in which our miserable certainty that tomorrow will be different from today in ways we can't predict, can be transmuted to a sense of excitement and anticipation, occasionally evolving into awe."
- John Brunner
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| Dark Side | ||
| Referring to the unlit part of a planet's surface. |
As far as I know, the first use of the phrase "dark side" with this meaning in science fiction (if not elsewhere, see below).
| The main telescope on the dark side is almost never turned on to the central observatory. It is the most delicate, the most perfect, of all the instruments on the Power Planet. Its scanning-disk alone took three years to make, with over one hundred thousand apertures to the inch. At its highest amplification, it will magnify something more than ten thousand diameters. |
| Technovelgy from The Power Planet,
by Murray Leinster. Published by Amazing Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
This phrase was also used in The Mercurian Menace (1939) by Nelson Bond.
“The dark side?” Carson stared at the investigator in amazement; then slowly shook his head. “No ma’am! Not Mr. Carson, lady. He stays away from the dark side of Mercury!”
“I’m not sure I understand you,” said the girl slowly. “You mean to say that you’ve made no investigations whatsoever on the dark side?”
“My dear young lady,” said Buzz seriously, “there are some things that even a space scout doesn’t go out of his way to meet..."
I'm sure this phrase was in use in the nineteenth century. I recall a famous quote by Mark Twain, taken from his 1880 travel guide A Tramp Abroad:
Compare to farside from We Have Fed Our Sea (1958) by Poul Anderson.
"...You must have seen plenty of night over on the dark side of Mercury.”
"Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody."
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| Chrysalis Generation Ship to Alpha Centauri |
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'The massive feet working the pedals, arms and hands flashing and glinting...'
