required reading for its evenhanded overview of so much of the previous critical/theoretical material devoted to science fiction.' -American Book Review Worlds Apart provides a comprehensive theoretical model for science fiction by examining the worlds of science fiction and the discourse which inscribes them. the most intelligently organized and effectively argued general study of SF that I have ever read.' -Rob Latham, SFRA Review '. I followed the news stories like a tri-V serial and then I was heartbroken when they just disappeared.Description: ' succeeds in formulating a typology of science fiction that will become a standard reference for some years to come.' -Choice '. The alien stepped closer, concentrating all his psi-faculties on the farmer’s mind.ġ956 A. Nourse Brain Sinner in Planet Stories Spring 71/2 We can study the Sun from Earth-side laboratories, but what we can see and learn from our observation is enormously limited by the atmospheric blanket between our telescopes and outer space.Ĭonceivably, the cosmic histories will look upon the First Era of any intelligent race as the planetbound era, and consider the Second Era begun only when the race has lifted itself by the bootstraps up through the planet’s gravitational field and into space beyond its atmosphere.ġ955 A.

Nothing draws men like the search for treasure, and the asteroids may turn out to be a treasure trove to surpass the wildest dreams of an Earth-born prospector. Finally, carbon-based life of this sort demands an abundant supply of oxygen to allow the reaction to proceed. The energy-producing chemical reaction is biochemical, an oxidation-reduction reaction which produces energy in the form of heat. For carbon-based life, water is the solvent, and as far as we can determine it is the only solvent that could possibly fill the bill.

Carbon is the building stone, an element with a great affinity for multiple kinds of chemical combinations resulting in stable compounds. The life that we have observed-the life-as-we-know-it-on-Earth-can be defined in terms of these criteria. It need not be carbon-based, it need not conform to any of the conditions required by carbon-based life-as-we-know-it here on Earth. We have every justification, however, in speculating that life, in order to exist, need not be life-as-we-know-it. Of course, we have no factual basis on which to speculate that non-carbon-based, non-water-or-colloid-based, nonprotoplasmic life does exist on Mercury any more than we can justifiably assume that it does not.

PRoblem by Alan E. Nourse