Memory jog, please

[james_davis_nicoll]

Back in the dawn of the uncrewed space probe era, one reaction to the new model solar system was to compile "farewell" anthologies to the golden age worlds now displaced by new facts. I own FAREWELL, FANTASTIC VENUS and JUPITER but I was sure that there was one for Mars as well. Does anyone remember the title?

Comments

[drplokta]

Are you thinking of the anthology edited by Jane Hipolito and Willis E McNelly entitled The Book Of Mars in the UK, but I think Mars, We Love You in North America?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

That does sound very familiar. I don't seem to own a copy, which may explain why I didn't find it.

Are there any other worlds for which such a collection could have been assembled? Mars, Venus and Jupiter are frequently used locations. At a guess, pre-Huygens Titan should do-able and the same for the pre-Ranger Moon.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Mercury, which turned out not to have a Dark Side.

Perhaps the planet between Mars and Jupiter, with stories set before it was broken up into asteroids?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the planet between Mars and Jupiter, with stories set before it was broken up into asteroids?

You'd think the amount of energy used to disrupt an Earth-sized planet (roughly all of the energy the Sun emits over a week) would have killed Explodie the Fifth Planet stories ages ago but I read one just a couple of years ago. OK, it _was_ a Hogan but I am pretty sure Robert Sawyer used the idea as well in END OF AN ERA.

Now, do I want to google "Tom van Flandern" and "science fiction" or would it just make me sad?


It seems to me that one of the old serials used to pad out the 1970s translations of Perry Rhodan had to do with the asteroid belt.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The latest story I remember to use Explodie the Fifth Planet was Charles Sheffield's Proteus series. But maybe there were some after that.

I recall the aged Robert Heinlein speaking approvingly of Tom van Flandern in one of the essays reprinted in, I think, "Expanded Universe"; I think van Flandern had convinced him that he'd found evidence of changing fundamental constants as speculated by Dirac.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

It's on page 484 of the Ace trade paperback.

[pfdietz.livejournal.com]

Oh good grief, TvF...

I recall getting into heated exchanges with him on usenet. His idea about the source of the asteroids in a recently disrupted planet was just crackpot. An Earth-sized planet with chondritic abundances of elements would have an extremely hot interior, just as the Earth does, and for the same reason (radioactive decay). The core of the Earth is as hot as the surface of the Sun, and is kept in a liquid and/or solid state only by the enormous pressure. If you break the Earth into small pieces, decreasing that pressure, you don't get chunks of iron, you get a fiercely glowing cloud of iron vapor. Most of the mantle would also melt. The result would look nothing like the asteroid belt and meteorites we see today.