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| Jonah Thomas... |
 Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:04 pm |
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Guest
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From _Space Chantey_, by RA Lafferty.
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What *were* those things sliding in through the low sky, skimming in not
ten meters abouve the land, sliently and flatly and raggedly? Wait a
minute now. It is camouflage of some sort. They cannot be big flat slabs
of stone sliding about in the air with giant Trolls standing on them!
But they sure did look like big slabs of stone, some of them twenty
meters in diameter, some of them only a tenth as wide. There were
ten-man and five-man and one-man slabs sliding along flatly above the
ground. And when they came down they still looked like stone slabs, and
they were.
Well, how do stone slabs as heavy as these (and the smallest of them
were so heavy that twelve men could not budge them at all on the ground)
cruise about above the land with no mechanism whatsoever.
"Crewman Bramble, how is that possible?" Captain Roadstrum asked.
"It isn't. Our wits are scrambled, our eyes fail us; it is not possible
at all."
"I see that you have never encountered a science as advanced as ours,"
the boy Hondstarfer said as he came out of one of the hornet craft to
enlighten them. "This is so far beyond you that I am not sure I can
explain it to you. You yourselves are caught in the electromagnetic
dead-end, so you are hardly able to imagine a thing like this and you
doubt your eyes. We are fortunate. We have no surface metal on our
world, or perhaps we would have been caught in the same dead-end. Is
this not much neater? Our cars operate naturally on the static-repulsion
principle."
"How can that be?" asked Crewman Bramble, who knew the theory of
everything. "The static-repulsion principle can move nothing heavier
than feathers."
"What do you use for feathers on World?" the boy Hondstarfer asked in
amazement. "Here it will move stone slabs of a pretty good size, and it
would move mountains if they weren't rooted so deeply into the land.
This is a dry world and one without metals in its surface. It is mostly
of pure flint. So we take slabs of chert or impure flint from the
mountains, and there is sufficient static-repulsion between the slabs
and the surface flint to enable the slabs to glide and fly."
"It is impossible," said Crewman Bramble.
"Shall I tell you the supreme scientific law of the universes?"
Hondstarfer asked. "Hold onto your ears or they may fall off at the
magnitude of the disclosure. It is all scientific laws crushed into one.
Like charges repel. Think about it."
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Apart from little details like Hondstarfer only mentioning half of the
supreme scientific law, doesn't Lafferty have a point? How would our
learning about light and such be different today if magnets and
conductive metals had been rare? |
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| Henry Wilson DSc... |
| Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 4:10 am |
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On Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:04:55 -0400, Jonah Thomas <jethomas5 at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
[quote]From _Space Chantey_, by RA Lafferty.
-----------------
What *were* those things sliding in through the low sky, skimming in not
ten meters abouve the land, sliently and flatly and raggedly? Wait a
minute now. It is camouflage of some sort. They cannot be big flat slabs
of stone sliding about in the air with giant Trolls standing on them!
But they sure did look like big slabs of stone, some of them twenty
meters in diameter, some of them only a tenth as wide. There were
ten-man and five-man and one-man slabs sliding along flatly above the
ground. And when they came down they still looked like stone slabs, and
they were.
Well, how do stone slabs as heavy as these (and the smallest of them
were so heavy that twelve men could not budge them at all on the ground)
cruise about above the land with no mechanism whatsoever.
"Crewman Bramble, how is that possible?" Captain Roadstrum asked.
"It isn't. Our wits are scrambled, our eyes fail us; it is not possible
at all."
"I see that you have never encountered a science as advanced as ours,"
the boy Hondstarfer said as he came out of one of the hornet craft to
enlighten them. "This is so far beyond you that I am not sure I can
explain it to you. You yourselves are caught in the electromagnetic
dead-end, so you are hardly able to imagine a thing like this and you
doubt your eyes. We are fortunate. We have no surface metal on our
world, or perhaps we would have been caught in the same dead-end. Is
this not much neater? Our cars operate naturally on the static-repulsion
principle."
"How can that be?" asked Crewman Bramble, who knew the theory of
everything. "The static-repulsion principle can move nothing heavier
than feathers."
"What do you use for feathers on World?" the boy Hondstarfer asked in
amazement. "Here it will move stone slabs of a pretty good size, and it
would move mountains if they weren't rooted so deeply into the land.
This is a dry world and one without metals in its surface. It is mostly
of pure flint. So we take slabs of chert or impure flint from the
mountains, and there is sufficient static-repulsion between the slabs
and the surface flint to enable the slabs to glide and fly."
"It is impossible," said Crewman Bramble.
"Shall I tell you the supreme scientific law of the universes?"
Hondstarfer asked. "Hold onto your ears or they may fall off at the
magnitude of the disclosure. It is all scientific laws crushed into one.
Like charges repel. Think about it."
------------------
Apart from little details like Hondstarfer only mentioning half of the
supreme scientific law, doesn't Lafferty have a point? How would our
learning about light and such be different today if magnets and
conductive metals had been rare?
[/quote]
Why is there iron? Why is there water? Why is there not 'just nothing'?
Henry Wilson...www.scisite.info/index.htm
Einstein...World's greatest SciFi writer.. |
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