Review: Astounding Science Fiction, February 1944

Astounding Science Fiction, February 1944 by John W. Campbell Jr.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This review is for 'Off the Beam' by George O. Smith.

"We can check the solar electrostatic field to about seven decimal places right here, and any deviation in the field to the tune of a couple of million electron volts at a distance of a hundred million miles will cause a distortion in the field that we can measure."

Well, I loved it but this was very technical writing. It had a very realistic feel I thought, but not a very dramatic one, given the situation. The best way I can think to describe it was that it was like you were actually on board the ship but that it wasn't really in trouble. Or perhaps that's more like being on board a flight simulator. I suspect that's due to presuming too much about the ending but also probably because we don't get to know the characters very well in this story.

"I remember when we used to do that on manual. There were as many cases of mal de void during cathode change as during turnover."

It's kind of an early Apollo 13 story. A ship returning to Earth from Mars is hit by a micro-meteor during a turnover manoeuvre and the surviving crew must take over from the autopilot controls to save the day with ingenuity and the tools at hand. Like in the real life Apollo 13 situation, the ground crew and the flight crew must work together, but in this story they must achieve cooperation through intuition because direct communication is cut off between them.

"Right. Don, we're on the constants you gave us. What now?"
"At this point I think a short prayer would be of assistance," said Channing soberly.

It also has a bit of a repeated theme about the importance of command structure and focusing on your duty, when Doc keeps telling someone that they need to stop worrying about the injured and focus on the responsibilities of command.

"There is a shipload of gravanol aboard, too. You'll need that and so will we."

This is a great little example of a 1940s hard scifi story, a quick and pleasant read that'll transport you to the future, as it were, in the past.

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