[TML] Guns in Space!

[Bill Cameron]

domhanai at juno.com wrote:  "Speaking of Clarke, in his short, "Superiority,"
a starship fleet had a superior J-drive, but every time it was used
subsystems ceased to  function, or became misaligned. ObTrav, anyone?"


An excellent story that should be on everyone's reading list.  If memory
serves, it begins as a memoir/memo/request sent by a POW to his victorious
captors.  In it he explains how his polity, which had enjoyed technical
superioty over their foes, managed to loose the war.  In their desire to
maintain their technical lead, they expend too many resources on technology
that isn't quite battle ready and are eventually swamped by their
fractionally less advanced, but eventually materially more numerous, foes.
When you remember that Clarke was a RAF 'boffin' in WW2, the analogy is
clear.

IIRC, the not-ready-for-primetime-technology includes:

 - an antimatter or 'total destruction' missile whose trigger is
unfortunately tripped by simple navigation signals from the warship carrying
it.
 - A C3I 'battle controller' that required hundreds of specially trained
technicians.  Naturally, the techs were housed aboard a transport ship that
the enemy immediately targeted and destroyed.
 - the aforementioned "j drive".  ISTR it being something like a cloaking
device.  The ship employing it was 'withdrawn' from normal space to a
distance beyond enemy weapon or sensor range.  Imagine a rubber sheet whose
center you pull upward some great distance; the ship is at the center of the
sheet while the enemy is along the edges.  Anyway, this constant
'stretching' eventually stretches out everything aboard the vessels
employing it; transistors, calibrated parts, even the nuts and bolts.  The
changes are miniscule but crippling.

The zinger of the story appears at the end and has to do with why the
military leader is offering this advice to his former enemies.


Have fun,
Bill