Fictional Uses
The magnetic sail first appeared in science-fiction in Poul Anderson's 1967 short story To Outlive Eternity, which was followed by the novel Tau Zero in 1970. It appears as a crucial plot device in The Children's Hour, a Man-Kzin Wars novel by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling (1991). It also features prominently in the science-fiction novels of Michael Flynn, particularly in The Wreck of the River of Stars (2003); this book is the tale of the last flight of a magnetic sail ship when fusion rockets based on the Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor have become the preferred technology.
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Famous quotes containing the word fictional:
“One of the proud joys of the man of letters—if that man of letters is an artist—is to feel within himself the power to immortalize at will anything he chooses to immortalize. Insignificant though he may be, he is conscious of possessing a creative divinity. God creates lives; the man of imagination creates fictional lives which may make a profound and as it were more living impression on the world’s memory.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
“It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.... This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.”
—Isaac Asimov (1920–1992)