"Snowball": Conclusion

"Snowball." 

"Snow whirled against the house, blindingly, as if the world drew into itself and nothing lay beyond these walls. The muted skirl of wind came through, lonesome and shivering. But inside, there was warmth and a calm light."

This signifies that the social upheavals and conflicts are dying down so that now a new kind of life as normal can be found.

Our hero, Arch, needing to do something new, has an Andersonian moment of realization. His invention, capacitite, can concentrate energy and this can be used for:

"'Spaceships!'" (The last word of the text.)

Next: "Security."

"Security": Conclusion

"Security." 

I have read this story to its surprise ending and will let blog readers do the same. When subversives infiltrate Security, any plot twist becomes possible.

The secret project produces capacitite and call it ffuts. We did wonder whether the same name would be used. It is not.

Poul Anderson plausibly describes a scientific theory and a discovery that have not happened yet. My attempted summary might reveal a lack of scientific knowledge. 

Superior dielectrics might lead both to a perfect electrical insulator and to fantastic energy storage. A small accumulator with minimal leakage would make possible generators handling average instead of peak load. Portable electric motors carrying their own energy supply would enable "...electric automobiles and possibly aircraft..." Power sources could be remote, like distant waterfalls, or diffuse, like sunlight, and could augment or even replace declining reserves.

A mineral combining barium, titanium and rare earths and displaying fantastic electrical properties was found on Venus. Its dielectric constant increases with applied voltage, contradicting theory. Such variability implies a flexible crystal structure even though the substance is brittle. Understanding of this process, produced by a geological freak, involves quantum mechanics, oscillation theory and the periodic functions of a complex variable.

The team, which has formulated a tentative theory of the mechanism and begun to search for a way to duplicate this super-dielectricity in more useful materials, comprises:

a gadgets being (the Martian);

a designer;

two physical chemists;

a crystallographer who is also a mathematician;

an expert on quantum theory and inter-atomic forces;

an imaginative experimenter;

a synthesizer, the team leader.

The previous team leader, unfamiliar with the Belloni matrix, had used a simplified quantum mechanics that did not correct for relativistic effects, thus overlooking some space-time effects of the psi function. Belloni's work remains classified because it is useful in the design of new alloys. The corrected equations provide "...an adequate theory of super-dielectricity..." and a precise idea of the necessary semi-crystalline, semi-plastic substance "...with a grid of carbon-linked atoms." Experiments eventually produce this substance which is physically and chemically stable over hundreds of degrees, has a breakdown voltage in the millions, has an insulation resistance better than any other and a dialectric constant, ranging from a hundred thousand to about three billion, that can be varied "...by a simple electric field normal to the applied voltage gradient..." which can be generated by a couple of dry cells, is the ultimate dielectric and can be made by anyone at home.

There are scientific, industrial and military applications.

Military

lightning throwers

fuelless vehicles

"deadly hand guns"

pistols equal to cannons

weapons for citizens or rebels

Next: "Sentiment, Inc."

Wind And Sky

"Snowball."

Like "Let There Be Light" in Robert Heinlein's Future History, this is a story about a new source of cheap energy. Someone might summarize the technical details and economic ramifications. Not me.

"Autumn, the New England fall of rain and chill whistling wind, smoky days and flame-like leaves and the far wild honking of southbound geese."

We are on familiar territory here, especially with the "chill whistling wind." However, the paragraph continues by outlining human activities:

"The crash came in September: a reeling market hit bottom and stayed there. Gasoline sales were down twenty-five per cent already, and the industry was laying men off by the hundreds of thousands. That cut out their purchasing power and hit the rest of the economy."

A newly unemployed man who remembers the breadlines of thirties tries to kill the inventor of the destabilizing factor, capacitite.

During the depression, there are:

"...a leaden sky and a small whimpering wind."

As ever, a whimpering wind exactly expresses what is going on for the human characters.

And I thought that a leaden sky had played a significant role in James Blish's Black Easter:

There may be some textual evidence that the demons are not really at large. When Domenico wondered why an angel conjured by the white magicians appeared headless:

“The leaden skies returned him no answer.” ²⁹

And when Hess suggests that they are all insane, he does so “…in a leaden monotone.” ³⁰

Does Hess’ leaden monotone confirm that Domenico’s leaden skies are part of a collective hallucination? The word “leaden” seems significant. Blish would have known that he used it twice and that, by doing so, he linked an inner state, insanity, to an outer appearance, an unanswering sky. However, the Goat’s swallowing of the hysterically incredulous Hess seems even more significant, a decisive statement that demons are real.

-copied from here.