A dreadful cover? Certainly, but I am very pleased to see it and for a specific reason. My
Technic Civilization Saga volumes have been falling apart and disintegrating because of over-use. It is so easy to replace them via eBay. And it is a qualitatively different reading experience to hold a brand-new copy of
Young Flandry instead of a battered old volume with pages falling out, sellotaped together but now falling apart for the second time. My
The Shield Of Time has been through this same process of disintegration almost to empowderment, followed by replacement. Just reading a clean page is a very different experience and I still want books of paper, not on screen. Decades ago, an Asimov character remarked that he had read a book that was so old that it was printed on actual paper and each page had just the same text every time that you looked at it. Asimov got some details of information technology right.
Changing the subject before finishing this post - sf characters used to set off to the Moon or Mars in homemade spaceships:
Wells, The First Men in The Moon;
Heinlein, Rocket Ship Galileo;
Lewis, Out Of The Silent Planet;
Blish, Welcome To Mars.
Poul Anderson never did it that way - correct me if I am wrong - although he did do it with time travel in "Flight to Forever."
Forward, onward, upward, outward.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I'm old fashioned, I prefer hard copy books, with at least many of the works of my favorite (Anderson, Tolkien, Stirling) being hard backs. Preferably with good quality and bindings. Handled with care such books should last for decades.
I think Anderson soon realized the impossibility of home built space ships, requiring funds and resources beyond the dreams of practically all of us. Unless you are a multibillionaire with a passion for space--such as Elon Musk with SpaceX.
Ad astra! Sean
And SpaceX has the -only- reusable launcher yet developed, although now that people know it's possible I expect others soon. Starship/Super-Heavy will be fully reusable and cut costs to orbit per pound down to somewhere in the 5-10 dollar range.
Which compared to pre-Falcon 9 is... extraordinary. Since then costs were around $10,000 a pound to orbit. Falcon 9 is about $1,500 per pound to orbit.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And all of this is wonderful! I only wish there could have been an Elon Musk forty years ago. Frankly, I hope Musk/SpaceX soon face some real competition, because that would help keep them forward looking and innovative.
Starship/Super-Heavy bringing shipping costs down to 5 to 10 dollars per pound? Meaning maybe, just remotely maybe, even "we" could afford to go to the Moon?????
Also, I'm anxious about Chinese ambitions, given the horrible regime misruling China. I don't want the regime in Peking becoming dominant on the Moon and in space, because that would be very, very bad for the US and the West.
Ad astra! Sean
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