Well the other thing is, it was written for people who didn't have to look anything up. The same is true for SF pulps - the same cardboard characters acting against the same known background. Ditto the Air War Stories pulps: Nobody had to pause to describe the function of an aileron.
Question: If the railroads had survived the onslaught of the automobile, would 'rail pulps' have matured as SF eventually did? Imagine the result!
There's a strong "comfort factor" in nearly all genre fiction. You want to read what you like reading, and somehow the repetition isn't a problem. Characters tend to be cardboard because it's difficult for series fiction characters to change, and because readers don't necessarily want them to. (Series monotony is an issue I'll take up later on; you're getting a little ahead of me--though at least you're interested!)
As for modern railroad fiction, it does exist, though sparsely. I even wrote an SF railroad action story in 2000. ("Drumlin Boiler," from Asimov's April 2002.) Now, "maturing" can be a two-edged sword if it edges into lit'ry bigotry. I was roundly condemned at the Clarion workshop in 1973 for writing action/idea SF stories, by lit'ry types who went on to do...nothing. If "maturing" means we would be saddled with a railroad "new wave," eek! Count me out.
Werner von Braun wrote Das Marsprojekt in 1948. To quote Wikipedia: The Mars Project is a technical specification for a manned mission to Mars that von Braun wrote in 1948. The expected launch date was 1965. He envisioned an "enormous scientific expedition" involving a fleet of ten spacecraft with 70 crew members that would spend 443 days on the surface of Mars before returning to Earth. The spacecraft, seven passenger ships and three cargo ships, would be assembled in Earth orbit using materials supplied by reusable space shuttles. The fleet would use a nitric acid/hydrazine propellant that, although corrosive and toxic, could be stored without refrigeration during the three-year round-trip to Mars. He calculated the size and weight of each ship, and how much fuel they would require for the round trip (5,320,000 metric tons). Hohmann trajectories would be used to move from Earth- to Mars-orbit, and von Braun computed each rocket burn necessary to affect the required manoeuvres. It was not great literature. It was, however,
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Reading that excerpt and your comments my mind made a connection to Heinlein even before you mentioned him. There is a bit in one of his juvenile novels, Starman Jones, when the main character is being grilled to see if he can pass for an experienced spacer
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One Harry Stine story veered into railroads
anonymous
March 13 2010, 22:48:46 UTC
The late Harry Stine wrote a story in the mid-80's about an African nation's space program (Manna). One of the side-plots involved a locomotive being used to break a blockade; it was a very modern steam engine with a fluidized-bed coal boiler.
Harry, of course, was a pulp guy through and through. I've been meaning to get a copy of the story for quite some time. I know it won't age as well as "serious" SF, but part of me enjoys the pulps.
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Well the other thing is, it was written for people who didn't have to look anything up. The same is true for SF pulps - the same cardboard characters acting against the same known background. Ditto the Air War Stories pulps: Nobody had to pause to describe the function of an aileron.
Question: If the railroads had survived the onslaught of the automobile, would 'rail pulps' have matured as SF eventually did? Imagine the result!
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As for modern railroad fiction, it does exist, though sparsely. I even wrote an SF railroad action story in 2000. ("Drumlin Boiler," from Asimov's April 2002.) Now, "maturing" can be a two-edged sword if it edges into lit'ry bigotry. I was roundly condemned at the Clarion workshop in 1973 for writing action/idea SF stories, by lit'ry types who went on to do...nothing. If "maturing" means we would be saddled with a railroad "new wave," eek! Count me out.
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Werner von Braun wrote Das Marsprojekt in 1948. To quote Wikipedia:
The Mars Project is a technical specification for a manned mission to Mars that von Braun wrote in 1948. The expected launch date was 1965. He envisioned an "enormous scientific expedition" involving a fleet of ten spacecraft with 70 crew members that would spend 443 days on the surface of Mars before returning to Earth. The spacecraft, seven passenger ships and three cargo ships, would be assembled in Earth orbit using materials supplied by reusable space shuttles. The fleet would use a nitric acid/hydrazine propellant that, although corrosive and toxic, could be stored without refrigeration during the three-year round-trip to Mars. He calculated the size and weight of each ship, and how much fuel they would require for the round trip (5,320,000 metric tons). Hohmann trajectories would be used to move from Earth- to Mars-orbit, and von Braun computed each rocket burn necessary to affect the required manoeuvres.
It was not great literature. It was, however, ( ... )
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Harry, of course, was a pulp guy through and through. I've been meaning to get a copy of the story for quite some time. I know it won't age as well as "serious" SF, but part of me enjoys the pulps.
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