Murray Leinster
See first quotes from Murray Leinster
66 Quotations from Murray Leinster
| astrogate v. | 1964 Lord of the Uffts in Worlds of Tomorrow Feb. 12/2 You said you'd astrogated a Norse space-liner six hundred light-years tail first to port after her over-drive unit switched poles. |
| atmosphere suit n. | 1948 Space-Can in Thrilling Wonder Stories June 119/1 He put on a light atmosphere-suit and went out the lock. |
| blaster n. | 1945 Ethical Equations in Astounding Science Fiction June 120/1 You might bring a blaster, but what we’ll mostly need is light, I think. |
| blaster n. | 1945 First Contact in Astounding Science Fiction May 11/1 ‘Thank God for the blasters!’ The blasters are those beams of ravening destruction which take care of recalcitrant meteorites in a spaceship’s course when the deflectors can’t handle them. |
| blast rifle n. | 1957 Med Service in Astounding Science Fiction 86/2 There was light enough to show that it was not a blast-rifle—in fact, that it was no weapon of any kind modern men would ordinarily know. |
| communicator n. | 1947 Skit-Tree Planet in Thrilling Wonder Stories Apr. 42/1 He grinned at the profanity that came out of the communicator-speaker. Then—back at the irreverently nicknamed Galloping Cow which was the base ship of the Extra-Solarian Research Institute expedition to this star-cluster—McRae cut off. |
| deep-space adj. | 1948 Planet of Sand in Famous Fantastic Mysteries Feb. 93/2 The Bowdoin-Hall field, which permits of faster-than-light travel, is like a pulsating bubble, expanding and contracting at rates ranging from hundreds of thousands of times per second to the forty-per-second of deep-space speed. |
| deflector n. | 1945 First Contact in Astounding Science-Fiction May 11/1 The blasters are those beams of ravening destruction which take care of recalcitrant meteorites in a spaceship’s course when the deflectors can’t handle them. They are not designed as weapons, but they can serve as pretty good ones. |
| Earth-type adj. 2 | 1966 in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact Nov. 28/1 ‘There’s a yellow sun that looks close.’‘It’s Delhi… It has an Earth-type planet and there may have been a colony on it once. But there’s nothing there now! There’s something wrong with it and no ship is known to have got back to its home spaceport after landing on it.’ |
| Earthward adv. | 1947 Skit-Tree Planet in Thrilling Wonder Stories April 49/2 The Galloping Cow, in fact, exactly fitted her name by her outward appearance, as she galloped Earthward through emptiness. |
| faster-than-light adj. | 1947 Manless Worlds in Thrilling Wonder Stories Feb. 32/2 The journeying squadron—every ship wrapped in the utter unapproachability of faster-than-light travel—was oblivious to all that had occurred. Its separate ships came out of overdrive some forty million miles from the solitary planet Ades, lonelily circling its remote small sun. |
| first contact n. | [ 1935 Proxima Centauri in Astounding Stories Mar. 21/2 He had piloted the Adastra to its first contact with the civilization of another solar system. ] |
| first contact n. | 1945 First Contact in Astounding Science-Fiction May 12/1 He released the button. He looked suddenly old. The first contact of humanity with an alien race was a situation which had been foreseen in many fashions, but never one quite so hopeless of solution as this. |
| flame pistol n. | 1947 Skit-Tree Planet in Thrilling Wonder Stories Apr. 46/1 He reached the metal wall. He pulled out his flame-pistol and tapped at it. The wall was solid. He backed off five paces and sent a flame-pistol beam at it. The flame splashed from the metal in a coruscating shower. But nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. When he turned off the pistol the metal was unmarred. It was not even red-hot. |
| home galaxy n. | 1947 Manless Worlds in Thrilling Wonder Stories Feb. 25/1 An hour later Kim carefully tuned the transmitting part of the little ship’s drive to the matter-receiving station on Ades. In that way, and only in that way, the ship would inevitably arrive at the home galaxy of humanity. |
| home system n. | 1947 Propagandist in Astounding Science-Fiction Aug. 156/2 Everybody knows that their home system was found, and everybody knows that when we tried to open negotiations with them their ships attacked us in a raging ferocity. |
| hyperspace n. | 1934 Sidewise in Time in Astounding Stories June 43/1 Each exists in its own time and space, just as our universe does. But each must also exist in a certain—well, hyper-space, because if closed spaces are separated, there must be some sort of something in between them, else they would be together. |
| hyperspatial adj. | 1934 Sidewise in Time in Astounding Science Fiction June 31/1 We assume in some sense the existence of a hyper-space separating the closed spaces; hyper-spatial coördinates which mark their relative hyper-spatial positions. |
| light n. 1 | 1948 Planet of Sand in Famous Fantastic Mysteries Feb. 112/2 We're not making much time. Not over six hundred lights, I'd say. But we'll get there. |
| light-century n. | 1949 The Lonely Planet in Thrilling Wonder Stories Dec. 86/1 The percentage of loss among space ships dropped from one ship per thousand light-centuries of travel in overdrive, to less than one ship per hundred and twenty thousand light-centuries, and the causes of the remaining disasters were being surmised with some accuracy. |
| light-speed n. 2 | 1956 Critical Difference in Astounding Science Fiction July 13/2 Colonized worlds are like isolated islands in an unimaginably vast ocean, and the ships that ply between them at thirty light-speeds seem merely to creep. |
| Luna n. | 1945 The Ethical Equations in Astounding Science-Fiction June 120/2 Freddy Holmes, newly commissioned and assigned to the detector station on Luna which keeps track of asteroids and meteor streams, had discovered a small object coming in over Neptune. |
| matter transmitter n. | 1946 The Disciplinary Circuit in Thrilling Wonder Stories Jan. 44/1 This very vessel, however, was used by Sten Rendell when the first human colonists came in it to Alphin III, bringing with them the matter transmitter which enabled civilization to enter upon and occupy the planet on which you stand. |
| Mercurian n. | 1946 From Beyond the Stars in Thrilling Wonder Stories June 88/1 I said, ‘You old Mercurian! You old Plutonian! You want to blow up Earth!’ |
| midspace n. | 1948 Planet of Sand in Famous Fantastic Mysteries Feb. 94/1 It was absurdly like a hobby-horse for a man in a space suit, and it was totally unsuitable for interplanetary work because it consumed too much power when fighting gravity. For Stan, though, starting in mid-space and with only one landing to make, it should be adequate. |
| moon flight n. | 1948 Seven Temporary Moons in Thrilling Wonder Stories Feb. 69/1 He was not prepared for space-navigation save as the constructor of this ship. He could not think grandiosely of a moon-flight, or even of a jaunt to Moon, which was sure and entirely practical. The wallowing water-tank he skippered was now no more than four hundred miles from earth. |
| neutronium n. | 1935 Proxima Centauri in Astounding Stories Mar. 43/2 He’d explain the disintegration field, which collapses the electrons of hydrogen so that it rises in atomic weight to helium, and the helium to lithium, while the oxygen of the water is split literally into neutronium and pure force. |
| normal space n. | 1952 Barrier in Space Science Fiction Sept. 117/2 It became an area of stress in which the speed of light went away up—and therefore an area in which the Star Pup could travel hundreds of times faster than in normal space. |
| off-planet n. | 1959 Pirates of Ersatz in Astounding Science Fiction Feb. 19/1 Its ambassador was the only person Hoddan coudl even imagine as listeningto him, and that because he came from off-planet, as Hoddan did. |
| otherspace n. | 1949 Black Galaxy in Startling Stories Mar. vii. 36/2 Restlessly he set the tractor-beams—those not in use for anchorage—to fan out in all directions through this other-space. Practically nothing was known as yet about the dark universe. Light traveled faster there and inertia was less. Incredible speeds were possible. So much was known, and nothing else. The other-space could be a mere incalculable emptiness, without the most minute particle of substance anywhere in it. [Ibid. viii. 41/2] The force-field generators were intended only to drop the Stellaris into other-space but I designed them so they could be changed. And I just changed them. I had them spread out to make a spherical field a half-mile across—well beyond our hull. So when they went on, they dropped the pyramid-ship and everything else within a quarter-mile into other-space with us. |
| overdrive n. | 1945 First Contact in Astounding Science Fiction May 9/2 It was a light-year-and-a-half from the edge of the nebula to the neighborhood of the double star which was its heart. That was the problem. A nebula is a gas. It is so thin that a comet’s tail is solid by comparison, but a ship traveling on overdrive—above the speed of light—does not want to hit even a merely hard vacuum. |
| parallel universe n. | 1949 Black Galaxy in Startling Stories Mar. 20/1 The ship is drawn to the one spot the tractor-beam is focussed on, although it moves in a parallel universe and isn’t in our cosmos at all. |
| Plutonian n. 1 | 1946 From Beyond the Stars in Thrilling Wonder Stories June 88/1 I said, ‘You old Mercurian! You old Plutonian! You want to blow up Earth!’ |
| pocket universe n. | 1946 Pocket Universes in Thrilling Wonder Stories Fall 80/1 He'd evidently put aside the small contrivance I'd last seen him working on, and he'd made a gadget—a diamagnet or whatever it ought to be called—a thing that closed space around itself in a pocket universe when it was turned on—that was extendible. |
| pocket universe n. | 1946 Pocket Universes in Thrilling Wonder Stories Fall 82/2 You used that extensible contrivance, and made a pocket universe that reached from the inside of his baggage to where you were. You absorbed the space between. And you looted his luggage from the inside, took the proceeds and put them in a fund to be used for the progress of Hondagua. |
| pressor beam n. | 1945 The Ethical Equations in Astounding Science-Fiction June 122/1 By the way they're braced, there are tractor beams and pressor beams and—there are vacuum tubes that have grids but apparently work with cold cathodes. |
| rocketeer n. | 1953 The Journey in Star Science Fiction Stories 181 Joe woke, weightless, gasping in terror. It was that nightmare sensation of unending fall—the sensation the very first rocketeers had when they essayed to ‘coast’ to the moon on their own momentum. |
| rocket-ship n. | 1955 Scrimshaw in Astounding Science Fiction Sept. 131/2 There was a warning-bell in the shack, and when a rocketship from Lunar City got above the horizon and could send a tight beam, the gong clanged loudly. |
| scanner n. | 1935 Proxima Centauri in Astounding Stories Mar. 20/1 They had a scanner on it now and by stepping up illumination to the utmost, and magnification to the point where the image was as rough as an old-fashioned half-tone cut, they brought the strange ship to the visiplate as a six-inch miniature. |
| Solarian adj. | 1947 Skit-Tree Planet in Thrilling Wonder Stories Apr. 42/1 He grinned at the profanity that came out of the communicator-speaker. Then—back at the irreverently nicknamed Galloping Cow which was the base ship of the Extra-Solarian Research Institute expedition to this star-cluster—McRae cut off. |
| solar system n. | 1935 Proxima Centauri in Astounding Stories Mar. 21/2 He had piloted the Adastra to its first contact with the civilization of another solar system. |
| solar system n. | 1946 The Plants in Astounding Science-Fiction Jan. 142/1 Slade left the Copernicus with fuel for at most seven light-years. It’s fifty to the nearest inhabited solar system. |
| sol-type adj. | 1947 The Boomerang Circuit in Thrilling Wonder Stories June 30/1 In spite of his pessimism, Kim settled down to the fine calculations required for a voyage to a blue-white dwarf star not readily distinguished from others. Most inhabited planets, of course, circled sol-type suns. Light much different from that in which the race had developed was apt to have produced vegetation inimical to humanity, and useful vegetation did not thrive. And of course sol-type stars are most readily spotted by space navigators. |
| spaceboat n. | 1945 Ethical Equations in Astounding Science-Fiction June 119 Three minutes later the little spaceboat pulled out from the side of the cruiser. Designed for expeditionary work and tool-carrying rather than as an escapecraft, it was not inclosed. It would carry men in spacesuits, with their tools and weapons, and they could breathe from its tanks instead of from their suits, and use its power and so conserve their own. |
| space cruiser n. | 1945 Incident on Calypso in Startling Stories Fall 57/1 The automatic pilot of his space-cruiser had jammed on four gravities acceleration when a short-circuit developed somewhere in its inwards, and when the main fuel-tanks were empty and Steve could stir from the flat of his back, he had only his emergency fuel left. |
| space navigation n. | 1949 Black Galaxy in Startling Stories Mar. 66/2 Rod Cantrell…had departed from Earth without authorization in the only vessel capable of space-navigation. |
| space patrol n. | 1966 Stopover In Space in Amazing Stories June 12/2 Ordinary shipments of treasure by spacecraft were routinely put under the special protection of the Space Patrol. |
| spaceport n. | 1966 in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact Nov. 28/1 ‘There’s a yellow sun that looks close.’‘It’s Delhi… It has an Earth-type planet and there may have been a colony on it once. But there’s nothing there now! There’s something wrong with it and no ship is known to have got back to its home spaceport after landing on it.’ |
| spaceway n. | 1949 Last Spaceship iii. 18 It was a hundred years before the last of the run-away derelicts…was picked up by other space-ships which then still roved the space-ways. |
| stun gun n. | 1964 Lord of the Uffts in Worlds of Tomorrow Feb. 62/1 The stun-gun made a burping noise. Electric charges sped out of it, scattering. The gun would carry nearly a hundred yards at widest dispersion of its fire. Within the cone-shaped space it affected, any flesh unshielded by metal would receive a sharp and painful but totally uninjurious electric shock. |
| sub-ether n. | 1944 Plague in Astounding Science-Fiction Feb. 67/2 Giant battleships of space would be entering sub-ether tubes for faster-than-light journeying to the scene of emergency. |
| teleportage n. | 1936 Incredible Invasion in Astounding Stories Nov. 100/1 He wrote books…listing mysterious disappearances and appearances, people vanishing under impossible conditions. He thought it was what he called teleportage—carrying to a distant place. |
| time fault n. | 1934 Sidewise In Time in Astounding Stories June 35/2 I intend to camp along a time fault and cross over whenever a time shift brings a Norse settlement in sight. |
| time fault n. | 1934 Sidewise In Time in Astounding Stories June 30/1 We've got to get to the edge of one of these blocks that go swinging through time, the edge of what Professor Minott calls a ‘time fault’, and watch it! When the shifts come, we explore as quickly as we can. We've no great likelihood, perhaps, of getting back exactly to our own period. |
| time-path n. | 1934 Sidewise in Time in Astounding Stories June 42/1 We've been here for hours, and there’s been no further change in time paths that we've noticed. Is it likely that the scrambling of time and space is ended, sir? If it has, and the time paths stay jumbled, we'll never find our world intact, of course, but we can hunt for colonies, perhaps even cities, of our own kind of people. |
| timequake n. | [1934 Sidewise in Time in Astounding Stories June 22/2 There has been an upheaval of nature, which still continues. But instead of a shaking and jumbling of earth and rocks, there has been a shaking and jumbling of space and time.] |
| time track n. | 1947 Time to Die in Astounding Science-Fiction Jan. 145/2 It’s branching time tracks… That’s the idea! There can be more than one past, and more than one present, and more than one future. An old speculation. You do something, and it sets you on one time track rather than another. If you could go back, you could do something else and get on another time track. |
| tin can n. | 1948 Space-Can in Thrilling Wonder Stories June 117/1 When the Winship landed on Ganymede, it was on one of those errands that are handed over to destroyer-skippers, commanding the tin-cans of the space-fleet, because nobody with silver braid wants to do them. |
| tractor beam n. | 1945 The Ethical Equations in Astounding Science-Fiction June 122/1 By the way they’re braced, there are tractor beams and pressor beams and—there are vacuum tubes that have grids but apparently work with cold cathodes. |
| transhuman n. | [1953 in Science Fiction + Dec. 4 (title of story) The Trans-Human.] |
| vacuum suit n. | 1955 Scrimshaw in Astounding Science Fiction Sept. 131/2 There was a warning-bell in the shack, and when a rocketship from Lunar City got above the horizon and could send a tight beam, the gong clanged loudly, and Pop got into a vacuum-suit and went out the air lock. |
| vacuum-suited adj. | 1958 City on Moon 20 There should be jeeps carrying burdens, and the chest lights of vacuum-suited figures moving about. |
| visiphone n. | 1935 Proxima Centauri in Astounding Stories Mar. 29/2 Calling the Rocket Chief! Report immediately on personal visi[-]phone. Emergency! |
| visiphone n. | 1945 Pipeline to Pluto in Astounding Science Fiction Aug. 73/1 Moore turned away from the pay-visiphone, into which he had talked in a confidential murmur while the screen remained blank. |
| visiplate n. | 1935 Proxima Centauri in Astounding Stories Mar. 20/1 They had a scanner on it now and by stepping up illumination to the utmost, and magnification to the point where the image was as rough as an old-fashioned half-tone cut, they brought the strange ship to the visiplate as a six-inch miniature. |
| visiplate n. | 1935 Proxima Centauri in Astounding Stories Mar. 21/1 The visiplates showed the strange space ship clearly, now, even without magnification. |