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406. Arthur C. Clarke Invents the Modern World

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If you hang a satellite over the equator, 22,300 miles up, it will appear to remain stationary. Everybody knows that, or should, since global communications is based on the fact. A generation ago, everyone in the science fiction world also knew that this cornerstone of modern society was “invented” or discovered by Arthur C. Clarke.

I’m not sure that Clarke is still generally remembered for this. The origins of everyday things tend to be forgotten.

Clarke’s observation first appeared  February 1945, in a letter written to the periodical Wireless World.

When Wireless World began in 1913, wireless had a completely different meaning than it has today. It referred to wireless telegraphy, invented by Marconi, which used radio waves, interrupted by a telegraph key, to send messages. That allowed ships at sea to send and receive messages.

Wireless World remained on the cutting edge of electronic technology. so it was the right place for Clarke to write his February 1945 letter, which included these words:

An “artificial satellite” at the correct distance from the earth would make one revolution every 24 hours; i.e, it would remain stationary above the same spot . . . Three repeater stations, 120 degrees apart in the correct orbit, could give . . . coverage to the entire planet.

In October of that same year, Clarke was back in print in Wireless World with his article Extra-Terrestrial Relays, in which he fleshed out his idea.


Fig 3. Three satellite stations would ensure complete coverage of the globe.
Illustration from the 1945 Wireless World article.

Clarke discussed the difficulties of early radio and television transmission. Radio, particularly the lower frequency AM radios in use then, were erratic. Sometimes they only carried a short distance from the transmitter; at other times, they would bounce off the ionosphere and travel for a thousand miles. Television signals, being higher frequency, did not bounce off the ionosphere and so were limited to line of sight.

Relaying through orbital repeaters was the answer to both range and reliability. An orbit of 42,000 kilometers above the center of the Earth would provide a geosynchronous station.

The figure given at the top of this post –23,300 miles — appeared in every early popularization of space travel. It is not only a switch to miles, but also that distance is above the surface of the Earth, not the center.

To power his satellite, Clarke suggests mirrors concentrating the sun’s rays to heat water in boilers for turbines to run generators. He also suggests that “photoelectric developments may make it possible to utilize the solar energy more directly”. That is exactly what happened; only thirteen years later, Vanguard became the first satellite to use solar cells.

Clarke then went on to specify what kind of rockets would be needed to place these geosynchronous satellites into orbit and predicted, correctly, that such rockets would soon be available.

He also said:

The advent of atomic power has at one bound brought space travel half a century nearer. It seems unlikely that we will have to wait as much as twenty years (i.e. 1965) before atomic-powered rockets could reach even the remoter planets with a fantastically small fuel/mass ration — only  a few per cent. The equations developed in the appendix still hold, but v(elocity) will be increased by a factor of about — a thousand.

Oh, if he had only been right about that, too. Then our world might come closer to resembling the world envisioned by Harold Goodwin in his Rip Foster novel.

Into the Storm 2

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In word and deed, he demanded nothing of her, but when his soul cried out, she was bound.

She sensed his apprehension at their lack of altitude, and his hesitation, for this was her body that he piloted. Restraining her fears, she whispered, “Go ahead,” and felt the warm rush of his unspoken gratitude.

He banked away from the city, out over the open grain fields, fought the first gusts and rolled to enter the storm.

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They passed through a veil of rain into the heart of the thunder. The sudden wind tore her hair to shreds and the crackling static turned it into a puffball of startled tendrils. She felt the current, like her fear, and the lightning cut the clouds above and below them. Michael arched their back in exultation as he caught the first rising wind, but it died quickly and they were plunged downward.

She felt his fear as a sudden beast leaping from the bush; not like her own familiar companion.

“Michael!” Her voice and presence drew him back from the memory of that mad plunge when his skill and power had not been sufficient to match the storm. That was then; this was now. And as quickly as she spoke, he mastered his fear and thrust it away like a secret shame. He threw their arms wide to catch the air and beat their wings unmercifully to escape the downdraft. She felt the pain in her arms and shoulders, and cried out.

Their descent eased as he shunted them sideways toward an interface. She thought that she could sense the ground just below them, but he kept their eyes skyward. Then they passed through shuddering turbulence into a cell of rising air. Gently at first, then with gut-wrenching acceleration, the winds tossed them upward and she felt Michael’s animal cry of delight escape her lips.

How far upward? The altimeter spun at the edge of their vision, but Michael refused to look at it. There was no altitude for Michael short of the ultimate. Through the roof.

But not this time. They passed upward through the layers where lightning bolts play tag and on out of the rain, through the sleety layers where hail is born and into the eternal gray night of the upper storm. There Michael turned them in a lazy arc, resting and reading the instruments as he prepared for the slingshot.

These were the moments she treasured. Here, fear could take its silken claws from her throat for a moment. Floating high, serene and spent; knowing that what had passed would never come again, yet knowing that in the moments and years to come, it would repeat in endless variation. Sated.

In her languor she sent tendrils of half formed thoughts in caresses of shared selfhood through Michael’s mind. Now they were intrusions, but he would remember and treasure them in the days to come. This she knew in their great sharing.

It seemed a small thing to give him, when she longed to ease his burning. But that was denied by his shattered body.

He chose adjacent cells with care and dove into the well of a downdraft. They fell with wings spread just enough to catch the falling air and throw them toward the earth. Past the hail, past the lightning, and into the rain. Outspeeding the raindrops so that they smashed against her face like upward falling rain. more tomorrow

Into the Storm 1

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Into the Storm stands alone and without apologies, but it was intended as the opening of a novel. If you want to know where all this might have gone, you will find additional material in a postscript next Monday.

Into the Storm

Lydia spread her pinions as the pylon shivered beneath her. Dizzy with height, she swallowed back familiar bile and squeezed her eyes shut for one last moment of selfness.

“You are the eyes of my soul.”

She ignored Michael’s voice in her head and drew on all her strength to quell the shivering of her muscles. Thunderheads piled up in the west, clouds tumbling over one another in their haste to eat up the prairie. She retreated from confrontation to a safe, quiet corner of her mind, denying self and opening her mind to Michael while he waited with leashed impatience. The pylon swaying beneath her became as a great ocean swelling, and with her quietude established she whispered, “Now, Michael,” and he filled her.

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Spreading their wings to the coming storm, he pumped quickly twice, rising from the pylon and settling again. Accustoming himself to her body. She rode on the left shoulder of his mind, bright eyed and frightened, but ready. Her gift to him; a pledge of her love. It filled him as he filled her and the gestalt threw tremblings through their shared body.

The storm was striding across the prairie, a juggernaut of cloud with lightning for eyes and skirts of rain.

He spread their wings again and brought them forcibly downward. They cleared the pylon railing and fell, spreading their wings wide to catch the updraft. Upward then, with a beating of wings augmented by the rising tide of air. His mental picture – Daedalus rising with wings rooted in his flesh. Hers – a frail human suspended from synthetic wings, powered by servos and the rising wind.

Two hundred meters they rose as Michael churned the air with wings meant for soaring. Then he rolled gently left and volplaned toward the city below. Even in the heat of summer he would find an updraft there. The sky was impossibly blue, the sun hot on their wings in these last moments before the storm broke. They caught the updraft and circled the city — a jumble of glass, concrete and solar collectors. She retreated from seeing, concentrating instead on the steady beat of her arms as Michael swung them through the fastest rising currents. Michael was an artist at this; he had only fallen once.

He was neglecting his body. She sent her consciousness down the shivering wire of thought that bound them together, found him breathing slowly, his heart rhythm slow but steady, and returned. Cutting figure-eights against the sky above the city, Michael gained altitude, but she had almost waited too long. She sensed his impatience and shielded her memory so that he would not catch a picture of her clinging in terror to the ladder between the fourth and fifth levels while a gust shivered the pylon. Had the monitor seen her then, he would have ordered her off the tower. What would Michael think if her weakness denied him his one chance at ecstasy? more tomorrow

405. Blondel’s Future

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You really should go to Serial and finish Blondel of Arden before you read this post.

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I enjoyed writing Blondel of Arden. I like formal language, and I don’t get to use it often. I also rarely get the chance to write something completely light.

Blondel was pure fun, with every possible cliché in place. Quite sexist, actually. Somewhat like John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara in McClintock or in The Quiet Man. She gives him hell in both movies, and he paddles her at the end. (Pun unintended, but noted.) That is actually more than I can tolerate and I usually turn the TV off somewhere short of the end.

I understand the bondage symbolism in this kind of fiction. The climax of McClintock when O’Hara is running from her husband with all the town cheering him on is too much like a rape scene with spectators for my taste. I stopped well short of that in Blondel of Arden.

Blondel is a cynic, Grat is an innocent, and Sylvia is a twit. That’s thin characterization, but adequate for a short semi-comic piece. I enjoyed this brief encounter with more-or-less cardboard characters.

However, I’m a sucker for people, even people on paper. I thought Sylvia had some quality hidden beneath her flirtatious exterior. I liked her. I thought she had potential.

You have to understand that I wrote this many years ago. I thought of turning it into a novel, but I never will. I have four or five novels waiting in the wings now, and by the time I finish them, I’ll have a half-dozen more tugging at my sleeve.

But when I was considering a novel, this is what I had in mind —

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Sylvia returns home, sans broach, to a pointless round of “women stuff”. She hates it. She misses the one great adventure of her life. She also reviews he own behavior, and finds it wanting. Grat and Blondel served her well and she served them with contempt. She broods about her behavior, and works to make herself better in her everyday round.

This is not enough. She owes a debt. (See, I told you she had quality.) If she can’t pay it, she can at least acknowledge it.

Something – I don’t know what – happens which frees her from her obligations at home. She sets out to find Blondel and Grat, to do something for them if she can, or at least to say thank you and I’m sorry I was such a twit.

Blondel and Grat have become companions. Grat is beginning to lose his innocence. Blondel fears that it is from associating too closely with him. Grat is also lovesick; Sylvia was his first romance and he can’t forget her. Blondel finds this alternatively endearing and irritating.

Blondel’s crust is thinning, and that is dangerous. He is a smart, little guy in a world of ignorant, thundering clods. His ability to “do unto them” quietly and unnoticed is his only defense. Every time he does something self-serving – which is basically how he survives – Grat looks on, once again disappointed in his friend.

Sylvia eventually finds them and joins them. Nobody is really happy with the arrangement. Any pair of the three could find a way to coexist, but the three-way relationship cuts too close to each of their hidden weaknesses.

Each person finds him/herself in peril and escapes that peril only through the aid of the other two. Grat and Sylvia grow in romantic love, while Grat has to wrestle with the understanding that Sylvia is no longer a damsel in distress. Blondel, to his external disgust and his disguised satisfaction, find himself in an avuncular relationship with these two innocents.

What perils? How do they overcome them? Beats me. Writing peril and escape are the easiest parts of writing a novel. They will present themselves as needed, if you know your characters and where they are going to end up.

I was also planning to use this as an excuse to build a story around a fantasy version of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, a real event in 1520 when Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France held an extravagant series of jousts in the fading days of classical knighthood. Think kings in golden plate armor whacking each other for sport and bragging rights, in a world where cannon balls could blow fist sized holes through either of them if the battle were real.

This gives us three real and relatable people trying to survive on the fringes of empty magnificence. Now the kings are cardboard — which is their normal state of being.

I don’t have time to take six months to write this novel, but I would love to spend two days reading it.

Blondel 13

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“Now, Grat,” Blondel comforted, “not so dramatic, please. Tell me what happened.”

“The brooch is missing and she accused me of stealing it.”

She, then; not Sylvia, any more. Blondel fought hard not to lose his look of concern and asked blandly, “But when would you get the chance to steal it? It hung between her breasts, beneath her bodice.”

Grat flushed and said, “Well, this afternoon . . . by the river, uh . . . Well, dammit, she was willing!“

Now Blondel grinned outright. “At least your day wasn’t a total waste.”

That was no comfort. Grat caught Blondel’s arm and said, “Her father does business with Duke Corrin and his men are after me. What am I to do?”

“I have a fast horse. It is saddled, and it is yours.”

Grat wrung his hand in gratitude and cried out his thanks.

Blondel said, “It is the least that I can do. I held the illusion as long as I could.”

Grat’s mouth dropped and he shouted, “You left the real brooch on the trail?”

“I told you I couldn‘t hold the illusion at a distance. They would have had us otherwise.”

“But why didn‘t you tell me?”

“When, Grat? When could I have gotten you alone? She was on you like lice all the last two days.” Then he chuckled. “Besides, if I had told you, you would have missed this afternoon by the riverbank.”

A broad grin creased Grat’s face. “Aye. That‘s right.” Then he cocked his head, hearing voices beyond the tents, and bolted for the horse Blondel had tethered nearby. Leaning down from the saddle, he thrust out his hand and said, “If we ever meet again, I am your man. You‘ve saved me from a terrible fate.”

Blondel took his hand. “Yes,” he said, thinking of Sylvia. “I think I did.”  finis

404. Various Anniversaries

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I was really busy two years ago, and forty-two years ago.

On September 2, 1975 – the day after Labor Day that year – I sat down to see if I could write a novel. By Christmas, the first iteration of Spirit Deer was a reality, and I had become a writer.

Two years ago, six months after learning that Cyan had been accepted for publication, after several months of learning about blogging, after learning how to use Word Press, after pre-writing a few dozen posts — on August 29, 2015 I posted the first introduction to A Writing Life and Serial.

I seems like yesterday, and also like a lifetime ago.

Blondel 12

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Blondel looked up at Grat, quietly pleading for understanding. “I had to do it, he said. “We will need a fast horse, and soon.”

Sylvia rode, and Grat strode along beside her, smiling at her jokes as she chattered away the morning. From time to time she reached out to touch Grat’s hair or beard, but she never offered to let Blondel ride. He trudged wearily along behind them, still holding the spell of illusion. Grat had asked last night if he could hold it at a distance, and he had replied, “Not far. Not far at all.”

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Between the Andis and the Raipiar rivers, above their confluence, there was a meadow spotted with trees. Now it had been converted into a tent town with twice a thousand inhabitants. There were wares and entertainments of every description in a moving mosaic of colors and flesh, with rushing children and dogs, and pigs roaming the littered streets, occasionally toppling a tent as they rooted out its pegs in search of garbage.

Blondel took his leave and his horse at the edge of the crowd. “I‘ve some friends to meet, and some business to attend to,” he told Grat, “but if you find yourself in need, come to Chiana‘s tent.”

Grat took his leave hurriedly. By her carriage, Sylvia was making it clear that she was through with Blondel and that if Grat wanted her favors he had better be quick. Blondel watched the crowd swallow them up, following Grat’s unkempt head as it sailed unworried above the mass of smaller men. Then, smiling with world weary understanding, he let go of illusion.

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Something less than three hours later, Grat staggered through the back flap of Chiana’s tent looking as if the hounds of Hell itself were at his heels. The shallow parallel scratches that decorated his cheek were Sylvia‘s brand, and he stood panting like a stag at bay. Blondel came quickly up from the narrow patch of shade where he had been dozing and offered Grat the dregs of his winehorn. Grat emptied it at a draught and hurled it to the ground, shouting, “I am undone!” final post on Monday

Blondel 11

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They reached the road as the sun was rising. There had been no pursuit, and Grat asked, “Do you think they found the brooch you left?”

“I have no doubt of it.”

Grat looked uneasily over his shoulder, for the road was no haven of safety and they would be two days afoot before they reached the Faire. “How long before they find out what you have done?”

“I will keep the illusion up as long as I am able,” Blondel said, but he looked uneasy.

They made good time despite Sylvia. She walked at Grat’s side, leaning on him perhaps a bit more than was strictly necessary, and Blondel plodded wearily along behind. At first Grat wondered at his loss of vigor; then he decided that Blondel was still trying to hold the spell of illusion. He tried clumsily to express his gratitude, but Blondel only shrugged it off.

Grat left Sylvia to walk with Blondel for awhile. She did not drop back to join them, but continued doggedly ahead, looking back from time to time toward Grat. He seemed oblivious to the invitation, but Blondel was not so sure.

Throughout the afternoon they talked, and Blondel found Grat a boon companion, and a strange one. His years as a guard had not made him cynical and his rough demeanor had sloughed off now that he considered Blondel a friend.

Grat had been on his own since he was very young and even now his stature was belied by the youth in his eyes and the wonder in his speech. He was the stuff knights should be made of, but rarely were, and Blondel stopped regretting the efforts he had made. Grat, at least, was worth rescuing.

Blondel tried to warn him of what lay ahead, saying, “Not all things are as they seem.”

Grat mistook the meaning of his words and replied, “I know that Sylvia has been harsh, but she is alone and frightened.” When Blondel would have spoken more plainly, Sylvia dropped back to lead Grat’s thoughts astray with gay chatter and a hidden, cutting glance for Blondel.

Blondel fell back again, chewing on the future, for Grat’s open friendliness had touched him deeply.

They spent the night at an inn. The innkeeper’s wife took pity on Sylvia‘s condition, helped her to bathe and provided her with simple but untattered clothing. Grat dozed in the corner, giving his wounds a rest, and Blondel played bones with the innkeeper and hostler. When they left the following morning, Grat found that Blondel had won a small purse and a saddled horse.

“Blondel,” Grat said, “you are shot through with luck.“

Blondel scowled. “I augmented my luck last night.”

Grat was shocked. “You spelled the bones! After the innkeeper took us in from pity!” more tomorrow

Blondel 10

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“They say it is magical,” Sylvia added.

“They lie.”

Blondel handed the piece to Grat, who turned it in his big hands, not really knowing what to make of it. “The centerpiece is sapphire,” Blondel said, “but of very inferior quality. The surrounding gems are emeralds of some value, though small. It would bring perhaps a hundred crowns on the black market; maybe thrice that if one could establish unencumbered ownership.”

Grat weighed the piece in his hand. “A hundred crowns? I doubt if I’ve made that in the last ten years. “

Blondel reached out for the brooch and Grat hesitated before returning it. Sylvia was beginning to look worried. “Aye,” Blondel said, “those outlaws would chase us to Hell for it.”

He continued to stare at the brooch, and Sylvia reached out saying, “Give it back.”

He shook his head and said, “Bide a moment. I have an idea. If this were left on the trail for the outlaws to find, all pursuit would cease.”

“Now just a minute!” Sylvia said, reaching for the brooch again. Blondel drew it back and Grat moved menacingly toward him.

“Stop!”

Sylvia froze, looking foolish, and Grat eased back on his haunches again. When Blondel chose to stop playing and project his will, his voice became a weapon of no small value. Even the crickets in the grass beyond the fire had fallen silent.

“It would not be necessary to leave the brooch, of course,” Blondel continued. “Only to make them think that we had.”

“How?“

“By creating a doppelganger of it.”

“You can‘t do that,” Sylvia snapped.

“No? I can‘t talk to foxes either, can I?”

She subsided. Blondel closed his hands about the brooch, bent forward and began to croon in a language strange to his companions. Grat felt the hairs on his neck begin to rise and reached for Sylvia‘s hand. She let him take it.

Ten minutes later, Blondel’s voice died away and he raised his head, stretched the muscles of his neck and opened his hands. Two identical brooches lay there. He handed one back to Sylvia and placed the other prominently near the fire. She turned the brooch in her fingers, examining it minutely. Blondel only smiled and said, “Let‘s go.” more tomorrow

403. Steampunk Dirigibles

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Warning: this post gets nerdy.

If it has dirigibles, it’s steampunk. No, that doesn’t quite work.

If it doesn’t have dirigibles, it isn’t steampunk. No, that doesn’t work, either.

If it is steampunk, then chances are, there’s a dirigible in it somewhere. OK, now there’s a pronouncement I feel comfortable with. Even Brisco County, Jr. had a dirigible eventually.

The variety of airships (a more generic term) in steampunk is huge, especially if you look at the vast number of illustrations on line. The Aurora in Oppel’s Airborn is entirely realistic. The Predator in Butcher’s Aeronaut’s Windlass if essentially an air-floating wooden sailing ship. Some are essentially floating cities. Some run on diesels. Some run on magic, or crystal power.

Back here on Earth, everybody knows at least one dirigible, the Hindenburg, just like everybody knows at least one steam ship, the Titanic, and for essentially the same reasons. Beyond that, real knowledge of actual airships is spotty.

It might be helpful, before embracing the infinite variety of steampunk airships, to have a go at definitions for those which actually existed.

First up, why dirigible instead of Zeppelin? Answer: for the same reason that we use the word automobile instead of calling all automobiles, Fords. Ferdinand von Zeppelin meant more to the development of dirigibles than Henry Ford did to the development of autos, so if you want to say Zeppelin instead of dirigible, I won’t argue with you. After all, I used to say, “Gimme a Coke,” when I really wanted a Pepsi.

However, in the world of my upcoming steampunk novel, you wouldn’t dare say Zeppelin. It would be unpatriotic. A Brit with more ambition than morals stole Zeppelin’s plans, sabotaged his work, and built a British fleet of airships before the German war, while Zeppelin’s war efforts came to nothing. The result was a sweeping British victory, an overwhelmingly powerful Britain, and a very interesting world to write about. But no one calls dirigibles Zeppelins.

In our (real) world, airships are often divided into three classes, blimps, semi-rigids, and dirigibles. Blimps are bags of lifting gas which hold their shape entirely due to internal pressure. Pull the plug, and they collapse. Semi-rigids have a keel structure which helps to keep them from distorting due to localized weights, such as engines, but they still don’t have a solid skin. Dirigibles have a skeleton and a skin, and individual gas bags for the lifting gas. Dirigibles are sometimes called rigids; that is the most accurate term, but it is rarely used.

You will find this three part division in dozens of books on airships, and it fits pretty well. But the word dirigible was used far earlier, and at that time it meant “capable of self-movement and control”. There were dirigible torpedoes in the water, long before Zeppelin put dirigible airships into the air.

Which drags us back to another recycling of an old word — torpedo. During the American Civil War there were two types of torpedoes, stationary and spar. A stationary torpedo was a mine. When Admiral Farragut sailed into Mobile Bay, shouting, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead,” that would translate into modern English as, “Damn the mines, full speed ahead.” A spar torpedo, on the other hand, was an explosive device attached to a long wooden pole and rammed into an enemy ship by a steam boat, often sinking both. Neither kind of torpedo had self propulsion or self steering.

Torpedoes with that capability were initially called dirigible torpedoes. The adjective dirigible was later dropped. E. E. Smith, in Triplanetary, recycled that old term for use in galactic warfare:

In furious haste the Secret Service men had been altering the controls of the radio-dirigible torpedoes, so that they would respond to ultra-wave control; and, few in number though they were, each was highly effective.

The original hot air balloons were (and still are) unable to steer or move on their own. The quest for dirigibilty (controlled self- movement) led to blimps, semi-rigids, and “dirigibles”.

So, there is plenty of confusion even before we get to the use of airships in steampunk. Call them dirigibles, if you want. Call them Zeppelins, if you want. I don’t see how anyone has a right to complain about your choice.