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"This category [science fiction] excludes rocket ships that make U-turns, serpent men of Neptune that lust after human maidens, and stories by authors who flunked their Boy Scout merit badge tests in descriptive astronomy."
- Robert Heinlein
 |
| Vibratory Mass Penetrator | ||
| A device that allows a person to walk through earth and even solid rock. |
Rock Diver is a very striking short story; it describes a day in the life of a very special kind of prospector.
| The outcropping sheltered him as he fumbled for the switch at his side. A shrill whine built up in the steel box slung at his belt...Pete clambered up on the granite ledge that pushed up through the frozen ground.
He stood straight against the wind now, not feeling its pressure, the phantom snowflakes swirling through his body. Following the outcropping, he slowly walked into the ground. The top of his helmet bobbed for a second, like a bottle in the water, then sank beneath the surface of the snow. |
| Technovelgy from Rock Diver,
by Harry Harrison. Published by Hillman Periodicals in 1951 Additional resources -
|
This idea is described in The Microscopic Giants, a 1936 story by Paul Ernst. In the story, prospectors in Michigan's upper peninsula dig deeper than ever for copper, and find an incredible offshoot of the human race that walks through rocks:
... I can close my eyes and see the thing now; a manlike little figure walking board us through solid concrete. It bent forward as though shouldering a way against a sluggish tide, or a heavy wind; it moved as a deep-sea diver might move in clogging water. But that was all the resistance seemed to offer to it, that sluggish impediment to its forward movement.
Behind it there was a faint swirl of luminosity, like phosphorescent water moving in the trail of a tiny boat... the face was as human as ours...
The explanation given is that this race of humans had lived underground (and in ground) for so long that their bodies adapted to the tremendous pressure by becoming more dense.
As the faint, luminous spot in the concrete grew larger it also took recognizable form. And the form that appeared in the depths of the stuff was that of a human!
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'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'
'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'
