Lewis Padgett

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Used as a pseudonym. See also: Henry Kuttner , C. L. Moore

See first quotes from Lewis Padgett

12 Quotations from Lewis Padgett

blowup n. 1945 ‘L. Padgett’ Beggars In Velvet in Astounding Science Fiction Dec. 14/2 After the Blowup, the fringes of the radioactive areas had caused the mutations of which the telepaths were the only survivors, aside from the occasional monsters—reptiles and harmless beasts—that still lived near the blasted areas.
blowup n. 1945 ‘L. Padgett’ Piper’s Son in Astounding Science-Fiction Feb. 19/1 If he had been born before the Blowup, it might have been different. Impossible to say. One could read history, but one couldn’t live it.
blowup n. 1946 ‘L. Padgett’ Time Enough in Astounding Science Fiction Dec. 128/1 Five hundred years before, an atom was split and the balance of power blew up. Prior to that time, a number of people had been playing tug of war with a number of ropes. Nuclear fission, in effect, handed those people knives. They learned how to cut the ropes, and, too late, discovered that the little game had been played on the summit of a crag whose precipitous sides dropped away to abysmal depths beneath. The knife was a key as well. It opened fantastic new doors. Thus the Blowup. Had the Blowup been due only to the atomic blast, man might have rebuilt more easily, granting that the planet remained habitable. However, one of the doors the key opened led into a curious, perilous place where physical laws were unstable. Truth is a variable. But no one knew how to vary it until after unlimited atomic power had been thrown onto the market. Within limits, anything could happen, and plenty of things did. Call it a war. Call it chaos. Call it the Blowup.
grav n. 2 1945 ‘L. Padgett’ Camouflage in Astounding Science-Fiction Sept. 150/1 The brain can stand more gravs than the body, but seven’s about tops in any case.
Homo superior n. 1944 ‘L. Padgett’ When the Bough Breaks in Astounding Science Fiction Nov. 81/1 The old order changeth. It had to start sometime. Alexander is the first homo superior.
mutant n. 1947 ‘L. Padgett’ Tomorrow and Tomorrow in Astounding Science-Fiction Jan. 29/2 Was it possible that he, himself, might be a latent mutant? And that the mutation could become dominant under certain conditions—and use supranormal powers?
otherspace n. 1953 ‘L. Padgett’ Well of the Worlds 90 It must be simply an absolutely adaptable form of matter, capable of instant adaptation to whatever type of matter exists in whatever otherspace Khom’ad drifts through.
psychohistorian n. 1945 ‘L. Padgett’ Piper’s Son in Astounding Science-Fiction Feb. 23/2 I’m trying to look at it from the angle of psychohistorian. If there’d been telepaths in the past, things might have been different.
speeder n. 1943 ‘L. Padgett’ Time Locker in Astounding Science-Fiction Jan. 104/1 He tooled the speeder downtown to the office building where he maintained a floor.
teleport v. 1 1944 ‘L. Padgett’ When the Bough Breaks in Astounding Science Fiction Nov. 89/1 The power isn’t disciplined yet. If I’d tried to teleport Myra Calderon over to Jersey, say, I might have dropped her in the Hudson by mistake.
timeline n. 1946 ‘L. Padgett’ Fairy Chessmen in Astounding Science Fiction Feb. 168/2 ‘You can move—and continue to move—in only one temporal direction, either future or past. But you can’t return. You'd meet yourself coming back.’ ‘What?’ ‘It’s a one-way track,’ Wood said. ‘Two objects can’t exist in the same space-time.’ ‘You mean two objects can’t occupy the same space at the same time.’ ‘Well? An extension of Ridgeley exists from now to his own period, along the time-line. He can’t go home. He'd bump into himself. He'd explode or something.’
Venusian n. 2 1943 ‘L. Padgett’ Iron Standard in Astounding Science-Fiction Dec. 78/2 All the Earthmen had learned Venusian quickly; they were good linguists, having been chosen for this as well as other transplanetary virtues.