C. L. Moore

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C. L. Moore
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33 Quotations from C. L. Moore

alien adj. 1936 C. L. Moore in Astounding Stories Dec. 18/1 This girl, this unknown, unimaginably far-distant girl, perhaps star-born, certainly very alien—had died as all her race must be doomed to die, until the last flicker of that stupendous civilization was stamped out.
alien adj. 1936 C. L. Moore in Astounding Stories Dec. 19/1 He could not guess where he was, in what land or time, in the presence of what alien race. The men were all little and dark and hairy, and somehow crooked, like gnomes. He had never heard a tongue like the gutturals they mouthed.
alternative future n. 1939 C. L. Moore Greater Than Gods in Astounding Science-Fiction July 144/2 It had happened too quickly for wonder—he was not even thinking as he opened his eyes and looked into the cube where Marta’s gaze had met him a moment before. And then a great tide of awe and wonder came washing up into his consciousness, and he knew that Ashley had been right. There was an alternative future. There comes a point beyond which bewilderment and shock no longer affect the human brain, and Bill was outside wondering now, or groping for logical explanations. He only knew that he stood here staring into the cube from which Marta’s eyes had smiled at him so short an instant ago— They were still Marta’s eyes, deep-colored in a boy face almost Bill’s own, feature for feature, under a cap of blue steel. Somehow that other future had come to him, too.
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. 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. 1946 ‘L. Padgett’ Time Enough in Astounding Science Fiction Dec. 127/2 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.
credit n. 1939 C. L. Moore in Astounding Science Fiction July 141/1 Sallie’s laughter was light. ‘Only fifteen hundred credits. That’s dirt-cheap for a Skiparelle model.’
dayside n. 1942 C. L. Moore There Shall Be Darkness in Astounding Science-Fiction Feb. 20/2 Artificial lighting is rare on Venus, which never knows true darkness on Dayside.
force beam n. 1939 C. L. Moore Greater Than Gods in Astounding Science-Fiction July 159/2 William Cory, there seems to be a question in your mind as to whether we could reach you with our weapons. Let me assure you that the force-beam which connects us can carry more than sight and sound into your world! I hope I shan’t have to demonstrate that.
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.
Homo superior n. 1944 ‘L. O’Donnell’ Children’s Hour in Astounding Science Fiction Mar. 139/1 Homo superior, sending his children among us—to play.
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?
needle-beam n. 1943 C. L. Moore Judgment Night in Astounding Science Fiction Sept. 137/2 Sighing, Juille fired at him around the edge of the screen, her needle beam making the air shriek as it passed.
needle-beam n. 1943 C. L. Moore Judgment Night in Astounding Science Fiction Aug. 47/1 She saw the silver mail burned away across his chest where that fierce needle beam should have bored through flesh and bone.
offworld adv. 1943 C. L. Moore Judgment Night in Astounding Science-Fiction Aug. 11/2 The emperor was silent, looking at her from under his brows. After a slightly uncomfortable pause, the girl turned away. ‘I'm leaving,’ she said briefly. ‘Where?’ ‘Off-world.’
other-dimensional adj. 1934 C. L. Moore Scarlet Dream in Weird Tales May 579/2 When he lifted his eyes to the wall, he knew where he was. Blazoned on the dim stone, burning through the twilight like some other-dimensional fire, the scarlet pattern writhed across the wall.
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.
space explorer n. 1953 C. L. Moore Shambleau in Shambleau & Others 39 The shouting died for a moment as they took in the scene before them—tall Earthman in the space-explorer’s leathern garb, all one color from the burning of savage suns save for the sinister pallor of his no-colored eyes in a scarred and resolute face, gun in his steady hand and the scarlet girl crouched behind him, panting.
space liner n. 1934 C. L. Moore Black Thirst in Weird Tales Apr. 425/1 Not even the lowest class of Venusian street-walker dared come along the waterfronts of Ednes on the nights when the space-liners were not in.
spaceman n. 1933 C. L. Moore Shambleau in Weird Tales Nov. 536/1 She pattered along a pace or two behind him, making no effort to keep up with his long strides, and though Smith—as men know from Venus to Jupiter’s moons—walks as softly as a cat, even in spaceman’s boots, the girl at his heels slid like a shadow over the rough pavement, making so little sound that even the lightness of his footsteps was loud in the empty street.
spaceway n. 1933 C. L. Moore Shambleau in Weird Tales Nov. 539/2 He heard the gossip of the spaceways, news from a dozen planets of a thousand different events; he heard the latest joke about the Venusian Emperor and the latest report on the Chino-Aryan war and the latest song hot from the lips of Rose Robertson, whom every man on the civilized planets adored as ‘the Georgia Rose’.
superpower n. 1944 ‘L. Padgett’ 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 ‘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.
teleportation n. 1944 ‘L. Padgett’ 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 ‘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.’
time track n. 1943 ‘L. Padgett’ The World Is Mine in Astounding Science Fiction June 19/1 Originally, in pattern a, there was no place for the eighty-year-old dead body of Gallegher. It was introduced and changed the future. We automatically switched into another time track.
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.
Venusian n. 2 1942 C. L. Moore There Shall Be Darkness in Astounding Science-Fiction Feb. 13/2 She bent her smooth fair head becomingly and began in a low, clear voice to chant as well as she could in Venusian to the tune of a very old drinking song of Earth, once the battle anthem of a nation that had fallen long ago.
Venusian adj. 1934 C. L. Moore Black Thirst in Weird Tales Apr. 425/1 Smith’s brow furrowed. A woman, here, on this black waterfront by night? Not even the lowest class of Venusian street-walker dared come along the waterfronts of Ednes on the nights when the space-liners were not in. Yet across the pavement came clearly now the light tapping of a woman’s feet.
videophone n. 1951 C.L. Moore No Woman Born in ‘M. Leinster’ Great Stories Science Fiction 185 Toward evening he surrendered and called Maltzer’s apartment by videophone.
videophone v. 1945 Life 9 Apr. 109/1 (advt.) From sound-proof booth, passengers may video-phone anywhere while train is moving.
vision plate n. 1943 ‘L. O'Donnell’ 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.