1899 collection of variously SF, polemic, and whimsical stories.
Hale, quite an odd chap in many respects, is probably best known
for the patriotic piece The Man Without a Country, but I read this
collection because it contains the first account of the launching of
an artificial satellite.
"The Brick Moon", published in 1869-1870, is that account. The North
Star serves as an easy way to determine latitude (in the northern
hemisphere, though that's never mentioned); how to determine
longitude? Clearly, an artificial satellite that orbits at a fixed
longitude, so that anyone can point a sextant at it and measure its
elevation. But this is no mere geosynchronous object (he hasn't
spotted that quirk of orbital mathematics); instead, this thing is to
be in a polar orbit four thousand miles up, passing over the same
points on Earth each time round. (This is not a thing that orbits do,
but the rotation of the Earth seems to be generally ignored here.)
It is to be made of brick, because he has worked out that at orbital
speed it will be heated in its brief passage through the atmosphere,
and iron would simply melt. (How will he get it going that fast? Why,
he'll run it down a track until it hits a pair of extremely
fast-spinning flywheels, and is thus precipitated into the air at a
precise speed and trajectory, and not for example smashed into tiny
pieces. Yes, well, Hale was a Unitarian minister, not an engineer; he
casually invents spurious engineering detail to bamboozle the
self-satisfied.)
Of course, first money has to be raised to build the brick structure,
flywheels, etc., and one of the conspirators has conveniently become a
railroad baron since they first thought of all this thirty years ago,
starting by reviving the fortunes of a single company:
He advertised boldly the first day: "Infant children at treble
price."
The novelty attracted instant remark. And it showed many things.
First, it showed he was a humane man, who wished to save human life.
He would leave these innocents in their cradles, where they
belonged.
Second, and chiefly, the world of travellers saw that the Crichton,
the Amadis, the perfect chevalier of the future, had arisen,—a
railroad manager caring for the comfort of his passengers!
Some of the conspirators get accidentally launched in the Moon with
their families (so smoothly that they don't even notice), but as it
turns out that's fine; Darwin is right, so "we began with lichens and
have come as far as palms and hemlocks", and they get livestock with
the same rapidity. Indeed, there's a theme here which recurs in
several of these stories, that the ideal society is a small group of
people living entirely disconnected from everyone else.
It's most interesting, I think, for its solutions to problems in an
era before radio, or most powered flight – Henri Giffard's
steam-powered dirigible flew in 1852.
"Crusoe in New York" has a master carpenter realising that a patch of
land in New York, fenced off for the benefit of millionaires' heirs
who won't have any interest in it for a decade, could provide himself
and his mother with a hidden dwelling, and indeed a small farm.
"Bread on the Waters" is a sentimental Christmas story in which Doing
Good is Rewarded.
"The Lost Palace" prefigures Starman Jones and its ballistic maglev
trains: here, someone comes up with the idea of leaping a steam train
across a gorge rather than slogging up to a bridgeable point and back,
and tries it with a fully-laden train. It lands perfectly, and the
passengers don't even notice, but one of the luxury cars is lost en
route. Nobody seems to grieve much, though they don't try it again.
"99 Linwood Street" has a new immigrant looking for her brother in
Boston.
"Ideals" has four couples making a new home in Mexico so as not to be
bothered by the trials of Life.
"Thanksgiving at the Polls" tells of polling-stations that our hero
realises are untenanted but habitable, so he starts to live in one,
and attracts a crowd of fellow immigrants and unfortunates.
"The Survivor's Story" is a tall tale that seems to have no point at
all.
The thematic repetition gets wearing, and really I could only
recommend the titular story out of these – and that primarily for
historical interest. Still, it has its moments.
I was pointed at this by
BigJackBrass ("recommended" would
not be fair to him). Freely available from Project
Gutenberg
Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.