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Operation: Outer Space
Operation: Outer Space
A Thrilling Tale of a Space Ship's Voyage to the Moon--and Beyond! The world's first interstellar flight is financed by making it into a television show.
Book Excerpt
as that sickening feeling of free fall, but he grimly made himself think of it as soaring upward instead of dropping--which was the fact, too--and waited until the third-stage rockets boomed suddenly and went on and on and on.
This was nearly normal acceleration; the effect of this acceleration was the feel of nearly normal weight. He felt about as one would feel in Earth in a contour-chair tilted back so that one faced the ceiling. He knew approximately where the ship would be by this time, and it ought to have been a thrill. Cochrane was hundreds of miles above Earth and headed eastward out and up. If a port were open at this height, his glance should span continents.
No.... The ship had taken off at night. It would still be in Earth's shadow. There would be nothing at all to be seen below, unless one or two small patches of misty light which would be Earth's too-many great cities. But overhead there would be stars by myriads and myriads, of every possible color and degree of brightness. They
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You know, it would be nice - and this applies to many reviews here in SF - if people simply accepted books and short stories written 50-70 years ago for what they are, instead of bitching and whining that the authors' crystal balls weren't functioning properly - the technology is off the beam, and society isn't really as they said it would be - well so what?
Dear god, it's science FICTION, not a cast-iron guarantee of how the future will be.
Deal with it.
Dear god, it's science FICTION, not a cast-iron guarantee of how the future will be.
Deal with it.
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Typical sci-fi space opera--an adventure set in space. The book's version of the future, like most books of it's time, was way off on technology & society. The characters are a bit sterotypical. But, these things are to be expected of a book written in 1958.
The book's one non-typical aspect is it's exploration of what space adventure would be like if it was conducted by PR people & TV producers instead of scientists. (Be sure to get some good film to keep the sponsors happy.)
The book's one non-typical aspect is it's exploration of what space adventure would be like if it was conducted by PR people & TV producers instead of scientists. (Be sure to get some good film to keep the sponsors happy.)
01/11/2008
A good read. The invention of a hyperspace drive (although not called that) allows a shipload of TV promoters to travel to distant stars. Really a question of who gets the adventure and who gets the glory.
10/14/2006