Henry Kuttner
See first quotes from Henry Kuttner
48 Quotations from Henry Kuttner
| alien life form n. | 1937 Raider of the Spaceways in Weird Tales July 64/2 It’s a unicellular creature—Janna told me—an alien life-form, developed along lines unfamiliar to us. |
| astrogate v. | 1942 We Guard the Black Planet! in Super Science Stories Nov. 29/2 I was right. Simple instructions and controls. Anybody could operate who could astrogate. And there’s plenty of fuel. |
| atomics n. 2 | 1947 Lord of the Storm in Startling Stories Sept. 54/1 ‘There’s a weapon right at our hands—the strongest one in the world. All we have to do is use it.’ La Boucherie stilled. ‘Atomics?’ he said, and his voice was not quite steady. |
| blaster n. | 1938 Hollywood on the Moon in Thrilling Wonder Stories Apr. 26/2 Blast out the lakes and canals—whittle down the peaks and mounds with atomic blasters—file them into the shape of gigantic buildings. |
| blowup n. | 1945 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. | 1945 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. | 1946 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. |
| continuum n. | 1938 Hollywood on Moon in Thrilling Wonder Stories Apr. 28/1 We’re looking into fourth dimensional space… So that’s the explanation of the ether eddy. It marks the orbit of a body in another continuum—a fourth dimensional continuum. It’s a hole in space, a hole created by a planet in another Universe. |
| continuum n. | 1940 Reverse Atom in Thrilling Wonder Stories Nov. 49/1 'But this reservoir—’ ‘Is another continuum. Another Universe, one separated from us perhaps by space and time, filled with potential and kinetic energy as our own Universe is so filled.’ |
| Earthside adv. | 1947 Big Night in Thrilling Wonder Stories June 45/1 They'll do the refining here and transmit the refined ores back Earthside. |
| energy screen n. | 1940 A Million Years to Conquer in Startling Stories Nov. 89/1 The atomic screen must meet just halfway around the Earth. If you turn on your power too soon, your energy screen will smash mine back and destroy this Tower completely. |
| galaxy-wide adv. | 1949 Time Axis in Startling Stories Jan. 50/1 When I investigated Belem’s disappearance I was much disturbed to learn how many other Mechandroids had vanished at the same time. I immediately assigned an all-out search, Galaxywide. But I was not too hopeful. |
| gateway n. | 1947 Way of Gods in Thrilling Wonder Stories Apr. i. 15/2 He shrugged his wings together and stooped to enter the gateway of the new world. Behind them the old man watched in silence, seeing the work of his lifetime ending. The gulf between them was too broad for leaping. He was human and they were not. Across a vast distance, vaster than the gulf between worlds, he saw the family of the mutations step over their threshold and vanish forever. |
| grav n. 2 | 1945 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. |
| gravity plate n. | 1940 Reverse Atom in Thrilling Wonder Stories Nov. 43/1 Special motors had been installed in the ship, engines that would pour a flood of power into the gravity plates—enough power to enable the Newtonia to pull free from the Sun's grip. |
| Homo superior n. | 1944 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. |
| Homo superior n. | 1944 Children’s Hour in Astounding Science Fiction Mar. 139/1 Homo superior, sending his children among us—to play. |
| impossible story n. | 1938 Selling the Fantasy Story in Writer's Digest Mar. 29/1 Impossible stories are the most convincing. They have to be, or editors wouldn’t buy them. It’s easy to believe in a two-fisted cowboy…. But fantasy is a different matter. |
| inhuman adj. | 1947 The Big Night in Thrilling Wonder Stories June 54/2 He shrugged, looking out beyond the crater’s rim with his inhuman, faceted eyes, at the glittering points of light which, for a little while, seemed to keep the Big Night at bay. |
| matter transmission n. | 1949 Time Axis in Startling Stories Jan. 42/1 Perhaps in a city of the future like this one I had expected vehicles or moving ways of endless belts. Now I saw that at intervals along the street were discs of dull metal set in the pavement. A man would step on one—and vanish. Another man would suddenly appear on another, step off and hurry toward a third disc. It was matter-transmission, applied to the thoroughly practical use of quick transportation. |
| mutant n. | 1947 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? |
| neural adj. | [1949 Time Axis in Startling Stories Jan. 61/2 I expected the laboratory, enormously braced, enmeshed with catwalks and, sparkling far across the room, the bright neural webbing that meant the dangerous man-machine was in the making.] |
| normal space n. | 1947 The Big Night in Thrilling Wonder Stories June 42/1 The visor screens blurred and shimmered with crawling colors, flicking back and forth, on and off, as La Cucaracha fought the see-saw between hyper and normal space. |
| otherspace n. | 1953 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. |
| pseudo-scientific adj. | 1951 Shock in Outer Reaches 133 In a sense, this story attacks irresponsibility, since it devalues a most familiar structure in pseudo-scientific stories: the twin correlates of Now and Utopia. |
| psychohistorian n. | 1945 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. |
| sense of wonder n. | 1946 Absalom in Startling Stories Fall 96/1 You couldn’t understand it yourself…. You tried it, and it was beyond you. You're not flexible. Your logic isn’t flexible. It’s founded on the fact that a second-hand registers sixty seconds. You've lost the sense of wonder. You've translated to [sic] much from abstract to concrete. I can understand entropic logic. I can understand it! |
| sentient adj. | 1949 Time Axis in Startling Stories Jan. xxiv. 78/1 If you can imagine a sharp tool made sentient, you may guess a little of how what followed seemed to us, who were so integral a part of the tremendous conflict, the ultimate destruction. |
| sentient adj. | 1949 Time Axis in Startling Stories Jan. xxv. 81/2 Imponderable forces shifted when that cleavage took place. You and I know nothing about it, for it happened far beyond the perceptions of any sentient creature. But it happened. Oh yes, it happened. |
| space-born adj. 1 | 1940 Million Years to Conquer in Startling Stories Nov. 19/1 You are space-born, Ardath. You cannot quite realize that only on a planet can a man find a home. |
| space burn n. | 1937 Raider of the Spaceways in Weird Tales July 64/1 Arn paled beneath his space-burn. |
| space dock n. | 1947 The Big Night in Thrilling Wonder Stories June 43/1 What were you doing around the space-docks? |
| space epic n. | 1943 Soldiers of Space in Astonishing Stories Feb. 92/1 It’s a cooperative job…. A gang of bums trying to come back. Even Helsing’s a bum now. He’s been on the Hollywood skids for years. Once a man starts going down there, nobody’ll give him a job. But Dan Helsing’s still a damn good director. His space epics used to raise my hair. |
| space lock n. | 1940 A Million Years to Conquer in Startling Stories Nov. 18/2 ‘Test the atmosphere,’ Theron commanded. Ardath obeyed. Spectroscopic analysis, made from outer space, had indicated that the air here was breathable. The chemical test confirmed this. At Theron’s request, Ardath opened a spacelock. Air surged in with a queerly choking sulphurous odor. |
| space tan n. | 1947 Big Night in Thrilling Wonder Stories June 40/2 The skin of his wrinkled face was nearly black with space-tan. |
| space travelling n. | 1940 When New York Vanished in Startling Stories Mar. 26/2 Space traveling, via rocket, isn’t a cinch, despite the centuries of study and experiment engineers have devoted to the problem. |
| spacewreck n. | 1943 Soldiers of Space in Astonishing Stories Feb. 93/2 Wait till you’re diving at a spacewreck, head-on, and you’ve got half a second to pull out. |
| speeder n. | 1943 Time Locker in Astounding Science-Fiction Jan. 104/1 He tooled the speeder downtown to the office building where he maintained a floor. |
| superpower n. | 1944 When the Bough Breaks in Astounding Science-Fiction Nov. 91/2 ‘Look, it’s normal for a mother to want to hug her baby. But how can she do that if she expects him to throw her halfway across the room?’ Calderon was brooding. ‘Will he pick up more…more super powers as he goes along?’ [ellipsis in original] |
| teleport v. 1 | 1944 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. |
| teleport v. 1 | 1953 Pile of Trouble in Thrilling Wonder Stories Apr. 55/2 I have just rapidly cultured a migraine virus in my bloodstream and teleported it to your brain—you gorbellied knave! |
| teleportation n. | 1944 When the Bough Breaks in Astounding Science Fiction Nov. 89/1 Teleportation? Quat showed me last night. He can’t do it himself, but I’m X Free super so I can. The power isn’t disciplined yet. |
| timeline n. | 1946 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.’ |
| time-slip n. | 1954 Where the World is Quiet in Fantastic Universe May 152/1 So even now I do not know all that lay behind the terror in that Peruvian valley. This much I learned: the Other, like Lhar and her robot, had been cast adrift by a time-slip, and thus marooned here. There was no way for it to return to its normal Time-sector. It had created the fog-wall to protect itself from the direct rays of the sun, which threatened its existence. |
| transmat n. | [1947 Big Night in Thrilling Wonder Stories June 43/1 ‘I’m one of the consulting engineers on Transmat.’ ‘The matter-transmission gang? What were you doing around the space-docks?’ [Ibid. 43/2] ‘Better not tell the skipper you’re a Transmat man. He’d hang you over one of the jets. Send him for’rd when he’s fixed up, Bruno.’ ‘Yessir,’ Bruno said, grinning faintly. An old deep-space man, he didn’t like Transmat either.] |
| vacuum suit n. | 1949 Time Axis in Startling Stories Jan. xiv. 50/1 I passed an Exploratory Station and took a minute to go in and grab a vacuum suit. Carrying it, I headed for a gate in the great dome that covered the city. |
| Venusian n. 2 | 1943 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. |
| vision plate n. | 1943 Clash By Night in Astounding Science-Fiction Mar. 28/1 Scott, craning his neck at a painfully awkward angle and trying to see through the mud-smeared vision plates, kept a rattrap grip on his end of the pole, hoping its slickness would not slip through his fingers. |