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2020-07-26, 12:29 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2011
SF Novels Featuring Bussard Ramjets?
For a brief moment back in the 60s, the Bussard ramjet was the hot technology for plausible interstellar travel. It received favorable mentions from Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan, was immediately popularized, and even found its way into Star Trek.
During the 70s and 80s there was apparently a slew of novels incorporating Bussard ramjets in one form or another, and they’ve maintained a dwindling presence ever since. That said, I’m not able to find even a partial list of these novels, so I turn to the Playground for help.
Can anyone offer one or more titles of SF novels featuring this concept? A link to the cover image would be ideal if possible, since I’d like to create a montage of covers from novels that include Bussard ramjets. Anything published over the last 60 years would be fine, although I’m expecting most of them will be from the late 20th century. The wider the variety the better, and my thanks in advance.
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2020-07-26, 01:39 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2019
Re: SF Novels Featuring Bussard Ramjets?
A World Out of Time has a bussard ramjet, it was written by Larry Niven. In that same Universe is the Integral Trees, and the Smoke Ring novels written by that same author. In the Ringworld novels, there were bussard ramjets mounted on the side to prevent the ringworld from going off center.
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2020-07-26, 01:43 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
- Location
- Manchester, UK
- Gender
Re: SF Novels Featuring Bussard Ramjets?
Larry Niven had a lot of novels where Bussard ramjets appeared, although mostly they were as background detail--the early stellar exploration in his Known Space novels was done by automated ramjets, and when they found a habitable spot on a planet, a "slowboat" carrying its own fuel was sent with colonists aboard; Niven's justification for this is that no complex life-form can live within the electromagnetic effects of a working ramscoop field, but I suspect that was his own invention. The only novel of his I can think of where Bussard ramjets were front and centre is "A World Out of Time" (actually a non Known Space novel). There's also a short story, "The Ethics of Madness", which involves a guy stealing an interstellar ramship; IIRC they fixed the "no complex life" issue by building a hole into the middle of the ramscoop field.
Oh, and the titular BDO in "Ringworld" uses Bussard ramjets as station keeping jets, as we find out in the sequel "The Ringworld Engineers".
[EDIT] Darn it, ninjaed!Last edited by factotum; 2020-07-26 at 01:44 PM.
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2020-07-26, 01:45 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2012
- Location
- UK
- Gender
Re: SF Novels Featuring Bussard Ramjets?
"Tau Zero" by Poul Anderson.
On the Larry Niven front:
A Gift from Earth (1968)
Protector (1973)
plus lots of his short stories.
A lot of the covers will bear no relation to the story - and most of these will have had multiple covers (e.g. UK cover =/= US cover =/= reprint cover etc.).
There were a number of artists who provided covers for SciFi novels, their work tends to be very recognizable as the style is distinctive, but the publishers rarely tried to match the cover tot he novel.
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2020-07-26, 06:11 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2011
Re: SF Novels Featuring Bussard Ramjets?
Originally Posted by Khedrac
A lot of the covers will bear no relation to the story - and most of these will have had multiple covers (e.g. UK cover =/= US cover =/= reprint cover etc.).
There were a number of artists who provided covers for SciFi novels, their work tends to be very recognizable as the style is distinctive, but the publishers rarely tried to match the cover tot he novel.
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2020-07-27, 01:23 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
- Location
- Manchester, UK
- Gender