Saturday 26 January 2019

Von Krockmeier

Poul Anderson, After Doomsday, CHAPTER NINE.

It is blog policy to follow up every obscure reference in a Poul Anderson text so what does anyone make of this? -

"No hazard was involved to the Kandemirians, no fantasy about the prisoners turning a micro-ultra--filtmeter into a Von Krockmeier hyperspace lever and escaping." (p. 92)

I googled "Von Krockmeier" and found:

Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon, here;
After Doomsday by Poul Anderson, here.

I also googled "filtmeter" and found this, as well as After Doomsday again. We could not do this years ago. Sturgeon's reference to the hyperspace lever turns out to be an un-serious fiction within a fiction.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Maybe we should understand a "micro-ultra-filtmeter" as a science fictional inside joke by Poul Anderson? He did occasionally indulge in such things in his stories. Such as that mention of a science fiction convention on the Moon in SATAN'S WORLD.

Sean