It’s deadline time for us Locuspeople, so I’m afraid an extended post isn’t on the cards right now. However, I did want to link to the YouTube video below, which got my sense-of-wonder antennae twitching. I’d like to write more about s-o-w later but, in the meantime, I’d be interested to know what recent works of sf have evoked it for readers out there. And, more trickily, is there any way to define it that doesn’t boil down to “You know it when you see it”?
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I have to say that as nice a piece of work this is technically, my first response is “How the hell did she avoid burning up on re-entry?” Sense of wonder can be overcome by skepticism, and maybe one of the distinctions between the core readerships for SF and fantasy is that ordering (or perhaps triggering-level) of responses.
liked this a lot – i take the burn up comment , but hey, what’s wrong with a
bit of fantasy ….
I like this video. It appears to be based on my short story, “Orbitfall,” published in Baen’s Universe about half a year ago. Indeed, avoiding burnup on reentry places demands on the suit. But as well, in the film and in “Orbitfall,” she isn’t in orbit. The falling velocity is thus much less (about 10% of orbital velocity).
Gregory Benford
Joe Kittinger didn’t seem to have any burning-up-related problems when he did it in 1960: