h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Nice one.

In fact there is a whole section about how the present has been shaped by visions of the future...

Er, I think Arthur C Clarke first wrote a scientific paper in some Radio Journal about communications satellites just after WW11. It wasn't strictly fiction, in that case.
He DID put space elevators into a novel though but they may have been thought of by someone else before that although he is very big on the idea.
These are huge towers on the equator which you (simply) climb up and jump off of to get into orbit. It saves all that mucky messing about with rockets.

What about 'A rose by any other name would smell as sweer', to paraphase Shakeseare from 'Romeo and Juilet'. Also yahoo from Gulliver's travels. I suppose a 'faustian pact' would count, from DR Faustus.

I rather meanly excluded Shakespeare when I started the thread, and the rose thing is a quote rather than a concept anyway.

But Yahoo and Faustian pact absolutely and definitely count. (It is impossible to divorce it from search engines now, isnt it).

Thanks

agcB

There was a space elevator article in last week's New Scientist magazine. The original idea was from the Russian Yuri Artsutanov in 1960, but was apparently relatively ignored until 1979, and Arthur C Clarke's 'The Fountains Of Paradise'.

However, from a literary point of view, it seems to have been a bit of a simulpost. The final manuscript of 'The Web Between The Worlds' - a novel by Charles Sheffield, then the president of the American Astronautical Society was at his publishers when a short version of Clarke's story was published in Playboy.

How about lasers. Apparently the laser in Goldfinger was science fiction at the time. I don't know if it was in the Novel, though, but the early bond films were quite very close to the books. Jules Verne and the submarine. What about the Peter Principle invented/discovered by tom Peter, that people rise to their level of incompetence.

The peter principle is apparently by L.Peterr however that is, not tom Peters. Sos about that.

A phrase popular in English soccer commentary is "Early doors". It is a derivative of early days, as in, "It's still early days but I can't see Liverpool getting back into the game". Apparently a player or manager (possibly Ray Wilkins or "Big" Ron) accidently said doors instead of days and the phrase has now become widely used ....

The laser was predicted a long time ago, don´t give James Bond the credit for that.

The theory behind stimulated emission was Einstein's (1917), but the ruby maser (the microwave equivalent) was invented in 1954, and the first optical laser in 1960.

The book of Goldfinger was written in 1959, and the film was made in 1964.
I guess the laser maybe didn't appear in the book - it is rather a cinematic effect, rather than a literary one, and though the power of the early lasers probably wasn't particularly high, I suppose it must have been high enough to give an idea for the film.

Malapropism: An incongruous misapplication of a word, eg polo bears,
Or Hilda Ogden always calling her wall painting a 'muriel'.

Named after Mrs Malaprop (from mal-appropriate), a character in a Richard Sheridan play. The Rivals I believe.

I believe Goldfinger invented the LASER Weapon. Previous to this, it had just been a shiny light scientists played with. Admittedly, as a weapon it was following a long line of "Ray Guns" in Science fiction, back to H.G. Wells and the Martian Heat Ray. So perhaps we can put down Herbert as the father of all laser guns?

What about mole for someone who infiltrates an organisation. or country Aparently this was invented by John Le Carre, although he claimed it was a KGB term. However, it used in Francis Bacon's 'History of the Reign of King Henry VII' in 1622. John Le Carre probably made it popular.

What about a ringworld. From the book of the same name by Larry Niven.
A ring world is a ribon like strip around a star that is situated at the right distance to support life. This a refinement on the Dyson Sphere (a hollow ball built round a star at a distance to support life).

Ring worlds and spheres around stars are unconvincing sci-fi. The sizes of such objects would be just too ridiculous. Imagine a ring world in the earth's orbit. You'd have to construct a structure some 935 million kilometres in circumference. You'd have to hold it up (quite an energy requirement), and then you'd have to put the two ends together when you'd built all the way round.

THEN... you'd have to ensure that no small heavenly body - comet, asteroid, moon, toothbrush ejected from a spaceship - ever tried to cross the same orbit. And the variation in gravity even in a simple little solar system would drag the thing apart.

Don't even try to work out the material and energy requirements to build a sphere around a star. It would enclose the energy output of the star. If there were solar flares they would have enough energy to cause upwellings in the structure.

It's just a joke.

Tell that Freeman Dyson then. Just because it isn't possible given current technology doesn't mean it isn't possible...

I wasn't talking about current technology, though I may have been talking about current imagination. I just think that such ideas require so much investment of material and energy that they are several orders of magnitude the wrong side of the probability line (to mix my metaphors and other terms).

Just imagine the volume of material required to construct a spherical object 1cm thick with a diameter equal to the orbit of the earth. My calculations suggest it would be
(1.1 * 10 to the power 49) cubic metres
which compares to the volume of the earth
(8.69 * 10 to the power 21) cubic metres

That sounds hard. I'll never say impossible, but I'm not convinced anyone will make that kind of choice. Ever.

Anyway, why would you want a surface of
(1.1 * 10 to the power 19) square kilometres
which compares with the surface area of the earth
(2 * 10 to the power 9) square kilometres
?

well its not a phrase, but I was looking up a word in the Oxford and was surprised to find "Lolita" with an actual definition. (sorry don't know who wrote the book)

Nabokov I think...

Yup. And English was his second language, and he wrote so lucidly in it. Wonderful prose. Shivers up the spine.

agcB