"Rochefort wanted to sit, look, let soul follow gaze outward into God's temple the universe." (p. 479)
In another fictional future and in the center of the Coal Sack Nebula, the star- and space-dwelling energy beings called "Angels" have built an artificial structure around a cluster of new-born stars:
"At the very centre, there could be nothing less than a cosmic temple, built from gas, dust, energy and stars to celebrate some mystery beyond the fathoming of so short-lived a creature as man."
-James Blish, The Star Dwellers (London, 1979), 8. A TEMPLE OF STARS, p. 87.
Since we have appreciated Poul Anderson's various means of FTL, we should also note the account given by an Angel in this same chapter:
"'We are cruising a vector in normal space between the two time axes, t-time and tau-time. The distances covered are more or less real, but the times involved cancel out except for a loss due to...?... Yes, Planck's Constant. The principle is much like the one that is used by this artifact in your egg, the...?... The Haertel overdrive. But much simpler.'"
-Blish, op. cit., p. 84.
Now we know.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I know nowhere nearly enough about physics to judge how plausible Blish's Haertel overdrive was--but I still think Anderson's summary of his Technic hyperdrive, as seen in ENSIGN FLANDRY, to be one of the most likely of the fictional FTL drives I've seen in SF.
Ad astra! Sean
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