Goerge O Smith, Venus Equilateral (off the A.C. Clarke thread)

spiney

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T_G said:
Well, you can't get everything right, but it is the vision that he had..

By the way, you recommend any of George O. Smith books?

Agreed, he was visionary!

As for Smith .....

I've read the complete Venus Equilateral stories, available in 2 vols, from Amazon, etc. They are all excellent, much detail and humour! However, the later ones depart from "known science", involving telepathy, teleportation, etc, making them slightly less interesting (but still good).

Also The Brain Machine, which if I'm not mistaken is (one!) inspiration for "Joe 90". Often mentioned as being "similar to" Van Vogt's "Slan", although I don't agree with that, but never mind .....

(George O Smith worked on proximity fuses, one of the first uses for printed circuit boards during World War 2).
 

T_G

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Strange, I can only see one Venus Equilateral book...
 

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lol is biiger than u :D
 

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Well, I bought one off amazon, I will wait until it is here to see what it contains. To be continued....
 

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well, I like Venus Equilateral, even when it gets silly in the later stories, Goerge O Smith could write and was always amusing.

Some of the sories are about conflicts between on-the-spot workers, and distant and ignorant managers, suggesting that the author saw quite a bit of this in his own job!

Interestingly, the last Venus Equilateral story was written specially for the John Campbell memorial volume.

www.space.com/sciencefiction/campbell_991130.html .

John Campbell WAS science fiction (!), and reading his collected letters to sci fi writers is very interesting, many of the most famous sf novels oiginated from his suggestions.
 

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Interestingly, in Venus Equilateral "Channing and chums" are constantly battling to keep their microwave beams "on target", during solar storms etc. I'm not sure this is correct science. True, varying solar activity disrupts radio communications on earth, mainly via ionosphere effects, but shouldn't "bend" a microwave beam between planets!
 
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