Re: Barnacles on writers other than Heinlein

In article <nebusj.1243900792@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, nebusj-@xxxxxxxxx (Joseph Nebus) writes:
Matthew Malthouse <usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

I'm just reading "The Prince of Space" by Jack Williamson. Spaceships
that lift off from Earth with ease, speaking tubes internally and
heliograph mirrors to communicate between them made me go looking for
the date which turns out to be 1931, 10 years after the first stations
were licences for public broadcast.

Heliographs FFS!

In Williamson's defense, there was a --- very strange, to modern
eyes --- concern early on that radio simply Would Not Work in aeroplanes
or space-ships because, of course, they could have no ground.

Radio in space was considered (at least by SF writers) a hard problem
in multiple ways. For instance, in the _Venus Equilateral_ stories, it
was a incredible technological breakthrough when they managed to make
contact with a ship in flight. In "The Man Who Sold the Moon", the only
way that they knew that the ship had landed was because the pilot
discharged a big bomb of carbon (roughly). And, in _The Mouse on the
Moon_, there was again no radio contact until the intrepid crew had
returned to Earth.

Who would have ever expected that the moon landings would be televised?

I just discovered a copy of _Mouse_ on my shelves last week, and was
struck by how similar it felt to "Sold".

--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.
.

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