2012 got me no Hugo nomination in 2013

[james_davis_nicoll]

But you know what it did get me? From Rapture of the Nerds:

It’s called a Nicoll-Dyson beam—a laser weapon powered by a star—and just one of them is capable of evaporating an Earth-sized planet a thousand light-years away in half an hour flat.

So there's that. (it takes a week to evaporate an Earth-sized world with the combined power of a Sun-like star, boo hiss, but to make up for it the range is more like one million light-years)

Comments

Patent

[hot-soup.livejournal.com]

Odd, so he just wanted to save himself the cost of filing? Or was he going to keep it secret as long as possible, i.e. until just before the technology was viable, and then file the patent?

Hmm apparently at the end of his life, he was quoted as saying 'I'm often asked why I didn't try to patent the idea of communications satellites. My answer is always, "A patent is really a license to be sued" ' which I suppose is true but maybe slightly sour grapes.