Islands of Space Unabridged Start Publishing LLC eBook John W Campbell
Download As PDF : Islands of Space Unabridged Start Publishing LLC eBook John W Campbell 
As Earth's faster-than-light spaceship hung in the void between galaxies, Arcot, Wade, Morey and Fuller could see below them, like a vast shining horizon, the mass of stars that formed their own island universe. Morey worked a moment with his slide rule, then said, "We made good time! Twenty-nine light years in ten seconds! Yet you had it on at only half power...." Arcot pushed the control lever all the way to full power. The ship filled with the strain of flowing energy, and sparks snapped in the air of the control room as they raced at an inconceivable speed through the darkness of intergalactic space. But suddenly, far off to their left and far to their right, they saw two shining ships paralleling their course! They held grimly to the course of the Earth ship, bracketing it like an official guard. The Earth scientists stared at them in wonder. "Lord," muttered Morey, "where can they have come from?"
Islands of Space Unabridged Start Publishing LLC eBook John W Campbell
I found this book most interesting from a historical perspective. This is old-school sci-fi. It's a mix of totally fantastical stuff (the faster-than-light drive, molecular beams, telepathy), some hardcore physics and astronomy (circa 1956), and some imaginative speculation about alien worlds. It's also very dated, in the sense that the author does not foresee the great advancement in digital computers and solid state electronics. They decided, despite its great weight, to bring a computing machine on board. Otherwise this whole ship of theirs runs off of vacuum tubes and giant relays and bars of silver as fuses. They use a slide rule to figure out how far they've traveled. They use photographic plates to record images of stars to chart their position. Another interesting bit that seems to be common from sci-fi of this era is that Venus is a habitable planet with indigenous life. Not a major part of the plot, but it is mentioned a few times. So basically when reading this you have to forget the last 40-50 years of scientific progress, and try to put yourself back in the scientific mindset of an earlier age.The first half of the book is very slow to get going. You have four characters who are fairly thinly developed, and they basically go flying around space getting into trouble. Oh no, we hit a cosmic ray storm. Need to figure out where we are, fix the ship and recharge the coils. Oh no, we came too close to a star. Need to figure out where we are, fix the ship and recharge the coils. Oh no, we're stuck in orbit around a neutron star. Need to fix the ship and recharge the coils and come up with some way to escape. There are lots of sparks flying all over the place, they keep getting knocked unconscious and thrown about, stuff like that.
The second half of the book they get caught up in a conflict between two worlds, which makes for a much more interesting story than the first half. I found the speculation about alien biology quite interesting, and actually fairly unique - not something I recall coming up in "Star Trek" at least. On that subject, I could see that this type of sci-fi was probably an inspiration for the writers of the original Star Trek. And not just the scenes where you see people falling down in the corridors while the camera shakes from side to side.
A couple of other comments: I don't believe there is a single female character in this book. They are totally absent. So I think this was really geared to nerdy teenage boys of the 1950s. The main characters play chess and wrestle and crack wise with each other, and call each other by last names. Something about it seems very quaint, like an English boarding school novel. You get a bit of development of individual personalities early on, but thereafter the characters are more or less interchangeable. I had to keep remembering which one is Arcot, which one is Morey, etc.
There are numerous references throughout to the Black Star and Nigrans and such, and I gathered from the introduction that this is detailed in earlier works by this author. However I am not too eager to read that.
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Islands of Space Unabridged Start Publishing LLC eBook John W Campbell Reviews
Just think about it. Here's a guy, John Campbell, writing about intergalactic travel in 1929! This is the time when we were just beginning to understand the size and true composition of the universe. These are the days of Edwin Hubble. This was WAY before Fred Hoyle tried to put down the now-accepted theory of the origin of the universe by calling it "The Big Bang."
Yet even back then, Campbell had assimilated what was known of the universe in his day and worked it into a cogent and thoughtful story addressing that still-unanswered question, "Are we alone?"
True to the soul of good science fiction Campbell only asks us to accept one or two basic premises that we can monkey with space-time and travel faster than "c," and that we can find, in this vast universe, another intelligent life form capable of, or interested in, communicating with us. From there the story is as good as anything Gene Roddenberry ever came up with. Indeed, Campbell was an inspiration for the genius of Gene Roddenberry, Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven and a host of other hard-core science fiction writers. Emphasis on science.
So give this one a careful reading. Suspend your supercritical mind. Remember that it was written when television was still a nifty trick in a laboratory, before the transistor was invented, when atomic energy was just a theory, less than 30 years after Orville and Wilbur flew their gas-powered box-kite at Kitty Hawk.
Islands of Space is more than just a book. It's a tour-de-force of one man's imagination as inspired by the wild and (not-so) wacky science of his time. Read it. Forget the flubs that YOU know about; Campbell had no way of knowing that silicone chips and printed circuits were coming. He had no "Drake's Equation." The Big Bang vs Steady-State models for the universe were just being formulated. Just read it... and make a promise to yourself to make yourself as open-minded and scientifically literate today as this man was in the late 1920s, when this book was conceived and written.
And beyond all that... it's a pleasant little story that expresses the sublime wish that no matter who we are, no matter where we come from, we're all in this together. So let's try to get along.
i read this boook thinking i have read it before and i looked at the clasic EE Doc Smith books and noticed that it was almost the same as one of his i would not bother reading it if you have read EE Doc Smith's books in the past.
Historically interesting though the stories are immature in their development. Perhaps a bit too much on the technology side and far too little on the personal (character) side.
Enjoyed the science and exploration.
I am going to read more of John W. Campbell Jr.. Reading science fiction written in 1930 is a little amusing at times, but I very much like the way Mr. Campbell decribes the scientific principals that are still true today. Too bad Mr. Campbell is not alive today; we would have a wonderful talent with the latest in science.
was good
A great, if very dated,read. To see how much has changed in the decades since it
Was written, is amazing.
I found this book most interesting from a historical perspective. This is old-school sci-fi. It's a mix of totally fantastical stuff (the faster-than-light drive, molecular beams, telepathy), some hardcore physics and astronomy (circa 1956), and some imaginative speculation about alien worlds. It's also very dated, in the sense that the author does not foresee the great advancement in digital computers and solid state electronics. They decided, despite its great weight, to bring a computing machine on board. Otherwise this whole ship of theirs runs off of vacuum tubes and giant relays and bars of silver as fuses. They use a slide rule to figure out how far they've traveled. They use photographic plates to record images of stars to chart their position. Another interesting bit that seems to be common from sci-fi of this era is that Venus is a habitable planet with indigenous life. Not a major part of the plot, but it is mentioned a few times. So basically when reading this you have to forget the last 40-50 years of scientific progress, and try to put yourself back in the scientific mindset of an earlier age.
The first half of the book is very slow to get going. You have four characters who are fairly thinly developed, and they basically go flying around space getting into trouble. Oh no, we hit a cosmic ray storm. Need to figure out where we are, fix the ship and recharge the coils. Oh no, we came too close to a star. Need to figure out where we are, fix the ship and recharge the coils. Oh no, we're stuck in orbit around a neutron star. Need to fix the ship and recharge the coils and come up with some way to escape. There are lots of sparks flying all over the place, they keep getting knocked unconscious and thrown about, stuff like that.
The second half of the book they get caught up in a conflict between two worlds, which makes for a much more interesting story than the first half. I found the speculation about alien biology quite interesting, and actually fairly unique - not something I recall coming up in "Star Trek" at least. On that subject, I could see that this type of sci-fi was probably an inspiration for the writers of the original Star Trek. And not just the scenes where you see people falling down in the corridors while the camera shakes from side to side.
A couple of other comments I don't believe there is a single female character in this book. They are totally absent. So I think this was really geared to nerdy teenage boys of the 1950s. The main characters play chess and wrestle and crack wise with each other, and call each other by last names. Something about it seems very quaint, like an English boarding school novel. You get a bit of development of individual personalities early on, but thereafter the characters are more or less interchangeable. I had to keep remembering which one is Arcot, which one is Morey, etc.
There are numerous references throughout to the Black Star and Nigrans and such, and I gathered from the introduction that this is detailed in earlier works by this author. However I am not too eager to read that.
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