A classic example is the faster-than-light space drive needed by a Star Trek or Star Wars story. A rocket built by two kids isn’t going to get off the ground without plentiful helpings of what TV Tropes calls “ Applied Phlebotinum,” the unexplained stuff or device(s) necessary to make the plot work. Tyco Bass, a small wispy man who turns out to be a “spore person.” They fly the ship to a previously unknown miniature moon, “Basidium,” inhabited by other spore-based mushroom people.Ĭameron is pretty good with her scientific facts-which means she lampshades the impossibilities carefully. Two boys (“between the ages of eight and eleven”) are recruited by a newspaper ad to put together a small rocket ship for the mysterious Mr. This was the appeal of a childhood favorite of mine, Eleanor Cameron’s The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet (1954). I’m thinking of spaceships constructed on an amateur basis, privately, and usually-though not always-by young people. Of course, “backyard” may not be literal. There’s a certain SF tradition of spacecraft built, more or less, in one’s backyard. It was when he told me it was propelled by a hamster running in a wheel that I began to suspect he was putting me on. As an ardent space fan, I was wildly enthusiastic. When I was little, my father told me he had a spaceship of his own, hidden back in the woods.
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