DOCSLIB.ORG

Of Science Fiction Author(S): Elizabeth Hewitt Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Of Science Fiction Author(S): Elizabeth Hewitt Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol SF-TH Inc Generic Exhaustion and the "Heat Death" of Science Fiction Author(s): Elizabeth Hewitt Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Nov., 1994), pp. 289-301 Published by: SF-TH Inc Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4240367 Accessed: 12-08-2019 01:59 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms SF-TH Inc is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Science Fiction Studies This content downloaded from 128.95.104.109 on Mon, 12 Aug 2019 01:59:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GENERIC EXHAUSTION 289 Elizabeth Hewitt Generic Exhaustion and the "Heat Death" of Science Fiction Do everything at the proper time Keep everything in its proper place Use everything for its proper purpose. -Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, 1861 In 1964 Michael Moorcock replaced E.J. Carnell as editor of New Worlds. At that time, Worlds' subtitle was "science fiction," by 1967 that subtitle had changed to "speculative fiction," by June 1968 it had changed to "fiction," and by October 1968 the magazine had abandoned all generic subtitles (R0nnov- Jessen 80). These generic changes can be marked in the very packaging of the material: what had once been a bimonthly magazine printed on newsprint was transformed into a large-format avant-garde literary journal printed on glossy paper. I This ugly-duckling tale of New Worlds' coming-of-age can be seen as a metonymy for Darko Suvin's narrative of science fiction's own generative history. According to Suvin, sf rose out of "the compost heaps of.. .juvenile or popular subliterature," developing by subsuming and outgrowing its discur- sive foundations (Metamorphoses 22). But this story of maturation is much too easy, for both Moorcock and Suvin agree that there is something efficacious in sf's marginality and always tenuous self-identity-its ambiguous generic distinction from other literary categories-and, perhaps more importantly, in its distinction from what has variously been called realist, mainstream, or mundane fiction. Sf's paradoxical desire-to grow out of its shaky generic status and, yet, simultaneously to maintain the unique status it gains from that marginality-is no mere "academic" issue, exploding as it does into the dan- gerous ground of the politics of marginality. In this essay I will not speak directly to the larger theoretical problem of identity politics; instead I will consider the question of genre, focusing on the representation of generic iden- tities and dissolutions in a short, and not often criticized or reprinted, story- "The Heat Death of the Universe."2 2. Pamela Zoline's "The Heat Death of the Universe" consists of fifty-four numbered paragraphs describing California housewife Sarah Boyle's domestic duties on the day of her child's birthday. Interspersed within this domestic narrative are ruminations on entropy, chaos, and the heat death of the uni- verse. Certainly the interjection of scientific speculation into a narrative on the most mundane, the least extra-worldly of subjects--housework-is notable; and yet we still must wonder, as Mark Rose does in his book on sf and genre, why "Heat Death" should be classified as sf: This content downloaded from 128.95.104.109 on Mon, 12 Aug 2019 01:59:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 290 SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 21 (1994) An interesting piece of fiction, and one that clearly gains resonance and impact by having been published in a context of science-fiction expectations. But is it science fiction? "The Heat Death of the Universe" raises once again, and in a particularly provocative manner, a problem that seems to bedevil everyone who thinks seriously about science fiction. What is it anyway? (1) Rose's solution to this generic quandary is simply to force Zoline's story into a rather conventional generic formula; he describes it as a classic "alien invades human body" narrative where entropy is the antagonistic alien and Sarah Boyle stands for a generalized protagonistic human will (31). We also could fit "Heat Death" into a generic sf frame by seeing Sarah's "break- down" (where she tosses dishes, jars, eggs, and jam around the kitchen) as a metaphor for apocalypse, a standard sf theme (Lefanu 97). Such readings, however, simply classify Zoline's story as sf by using "science" as analogy for "real world." In such a reading, Zoline's insertion of thermodynamic theories would be merely a metaphoric vehicle for describing the chaos of an individual woman's life. This sort of analogic critical enterprise would produce a "Heat Death" that thematically resembles sf, but necessarily would squander its metaphoric play value, which is critical to the generic capacity of sf. For if metaphors in "mundane" fiction are ultimately determined by the "real" world, then meta- phors in sf are the building materials of the "new" sf world.3 Familiar metaphors signify differently when we read sf. Samuel Delany explains how this alternate reading functions: Then her world exploded. Should such a string of words appear in a mundane fiction story, we would more than likely read it as an emotionally muzzy metaphor about the specifically emotional aspect of some incident in a female character's life. In SF, we must retain the margin to read this sentence in such a way that a planet, belonging to some woman, blew up. ("Generic" 177) Following Delany's logic, to insist that Zoline uses thermodynamic theories as metaphors for the social condition of domesticity is to exclude the possi- bility that her tale is about the heat death of the universe. By including "Heat Death" in the sf genre by way of a thematically structured model as Rose does, critics risk foreclosing the critical possibilities of the genre. Rose's meta- phoric reading, although it renders "Heat Death" thematically legible as sf, also forces metaphor to function according to the logic of mundane fiction's reading strategy. Reading "Heat Death" with what Delany calls an sf reading protocol, one would begin from the possibility that the ultimate horizon from which to interpret "Heat Death" might not rest on the domestic landscape. The critical possibilities of this specialized sf reading method make it the most suggestive interpretive frame in which to read "Heat Death." Theoriza- tions of such an interpretive strategy, of course, are not unique to Delany. Formulations can be found in the work of several writers, as in that by Teresa de Lauretis: "The sign work of sf, by re-literalizing language and giving it use value, can oppose the entropy of social discourse and re-shape our semantic universe" (169). Here de Lauretis, like Delany, makes claims for the unique potential of sf's metaphoric play, but more interesting is de Lauretis's own This content downloaded from 128.95.104.109 on Mon, 12 Aug 2019 01:59:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GENERIC EXHAUSTION 291 choice of tropes. She knows the sf canon well enough to remember that the New Wave sf writers of the 1960s-especially those published in New Worlds -persistently focused on questions of entropy (cf Greenland). Her choice of tropes would seem to suggest that New Wave writers, like Zoline, were rais- ing questions of genre through their own textual manipulation of entropy and chaos. By reading Zoline's working of these thermodynamic tropes according to such a strategy of heterosemy, we can both survey Zoline's negotiation of genre theory in "Heat Death" and investigate the more general implications of such a negotiation. 3. In paragraph 20, in a notable reversal of the metaphoric directionality suggested by Rose, Zoline localizes her narrative of the effects of entropy (the heat death of the universe) by letting Los Angeles stand for that "universe," which has "unwound" itself-that is, "used up" all available energy: The Los Angeles sky becomes so filled and bleached with detritus that it loses all color and silvers like a mirror, reflecting back the fricasseeing earth. Everything becoming warmer and warmer, each particle of matter becoming more agitated, more excited until the bonds shatter, the glues fail, the deodorants lose their seals. (120) Here, a "real" Los Angeles functions as a metaphor for a "scientific" universe that remains only implicit. Her apocalyptic depiction of southern California is not simply an ecological manifesto bemoaning the polluted Los Angeles sky; more, it is an attack on the imagination of the generic nature of (poetic) lang- uage-an attack on the thought of a world in which all semantic matter has been fricasseed. Two paragraphs later Zoline suggests an alternative recipe to this fricassee, implying that she can "cook" a color that will not merely mirror "Cunt Pink" and "Avocado Green" (112): Sarah Boyle's blue eyes, how blue? Bluer far and of a different quality than the Nature metaphors which were both engine and fuel to so much of precedent literature. A fine, modern, acid synthetic blue.... The chemists in their kitchens cooked, cooled and distilled this blue from thousands of colorless and wonderfully constructed crystals, each one unique and nonpareil; and now that color hisses, bubbles, burns in Sarah's eyes.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Ballard's Story of O: ‘The Voices of Time’ and the Quest for (Non)Identity
    Ballard's Story of O: ‘The Voices of Time’ and the Quest for (Non)Identity Item Type Book Chapter Authors Wymer, Rowland Publisher Palgrave Macmillan Download date 04/10/2021 07:04:47 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/2384/295021 Pre-print copy. For the final version, see: Wymer, R. , 2012. ‘Ballard’s Story of O: “The Voices of Time” and the Quest for (Non)Identity’. In Jeannette Baxter and Rowland Wymer, eds. 2012. J. G. Ballard: Visions and Revisions. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, ch. 1, pp. 19-34. Chapter One Ballard’s Story of O: ‘The Voices of Time’ and the Quest for (Non)Identity Rowland Wymer ‘The Voices of Time’ (1960) is the finest of Ballard’s early stories, an enigmatic but indisputable masterpiece which marks the first appearance of a number of favourite Ballard images (a drained swimming-pool, a mandala, a collection of ‘terminal documents’) and prefigures the ‘disaster’ novels in its depiction of a compulsively driven male protagonist searching for identity (or oblivion) within a disturbingly changed environment. Its importance to Ballard himself was confirmed by its appearance in the title of his first collection of short fiction, The Voices of Time and Other Stories (1962), and by his later remark that it was the story by which he would most like to be remembered.1 It was first published in the October 1960 issue of the science fiction magazine New Worlds alongside more conventional SF stories by James White, Colin Kapp, E. C. Tubb, and W. T. Webb. This was three-and-a-half years before Michael Moorcock took over the editorship of the magazine and inaugurated the ‘New Wave’ by aggressively promoting self- consciously experimental forms of speculative fiction.
    [Show full text]
  • Sfi Welcomes the Livingston/Planthold Team!
    SFI WELCOMES THE LIVINGSTON/PLANTHOLD TEAM! STARFLEET congratulates Mandi Livingston and her team for winning the 2004 Election for Commander, STARFLEET, and gives a warm welcome to our new Executive Committee and 126 staff members! DEC 2004/ Left: Sunnie Planthold, our new Vice JAN 2005 Commander, and our new Chief of Operations, Commodore Jack “Towaway” Eaton, at Vulkon in Orlando, Florida - where they receive the good news via cell phone! (In this photo, she knows, but he doesn’t - yet!) Photo submitted by Ralph Planthold Additional Vulkon photos on p. 28 TWO SETS OF NEWLYWEDS: JOAN & RICARDO BRUCKMAN... Last issue, we had one beautiful STARFLEET wedding... and this time, we have TWO to celebrate! Right: The happy couple, Joan and Ricardo Bruckman of the USS Hathor , pause for a group photo with too many STARFLEET members to name here (including members of the CQ team)! Photo submitted by Wade Olsen ...AND WENDY & JON LANE! Left: On September 5, Jon Lane and Wendy Stanford became married on a large green lawn situated along the edge of the beautiful and scenic bay at the Newport Dunes Resort. The audience included friends from the USS Angeles and STARFLEET members from both coasts. Photo submitted by Gary Sandridge Additional wedding photos on back cover USPS 017-671 112626 112626 STARFLEET Communiqué Jimmy Doohan’s Last Convention............3 Volume I, No. 126 Hollywood Entertainment Museum.........5 Inspired To Make A Difference..................6 Published by: Colorado SFI Member Goes Bald............6 STARFLEET, The International “Trekkies 2” Review.................................6 Star Trek Fan Association, Inc. Tuvok Does Astronomy............................7 3212 Mark Circle Jon Lane Gets Married............................7 Independence, MO 64055 From The Center Seat............................8 George “Sulu” Takei and USS Angeles CO Janice Willcocks.
    [Show full text]
  • Nasa and the Search for Technosignatures
    NASA AND THE SEARCH FOR TECHNOSIGNATURES A Report from the NASA Technosignatures Workshop NOVEMBER 28, 2018 NASA TECHNOSIGNATURES WORKSHOP REPORT CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................................... 1 What are Technosignatures? .................................................................................................................................... 2 What Are Good Technosignatures to Look For? ....................................................................................................... 2 Maturity of the Field ................................................................................................................................................... 5 Breadth of the Field ................................................................................................................................................... 5 Limitations of This Document .................................................................................................................................... 6 Authors of This Document ......................................................................................................................................... 6 2 EXISTING UPPER LIMITS ON TECHNOSIGNATURES ....................................................................................................... 9 Limits and the Limitations of Limits ...........................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Issue 349, April 2015
    Sigma The Newsletter of PARSEC - www.parsec-sff.org April, 2015 - No. 349 PM. I arrive at about 12:30PM and will in the future President’s Capsule be there by Noon. The hour or so before the meeting It seems that spring has sprung. begins is a great time when people trickle in and talk Turns my head metaphorically spontaneously about what movies they have seen, and practically to re-creation. what books they are reading, what conventions and I’m not sure what clod put the be- shows they will attend. It is a wonderful time. I urge ginning of the year at frigid and fal- you to become part. low January, but it would have been I have seen some email from people who are Par- better done in April. Oh, if I’m ever by Joe Coluccio sec members living out of city and state who have re- emperor… quested audio or video of the meetings. There are So, what of SF in this “new” beginning? some problems with the idea. I will be glad to ask any It is harder than ever to bring to light new SF works of the guest speakers and others if they are willing to and new talent, what with everyone publishing every- be recorded. BUT. Video and/or audio takes equip- thing everywhere. I read all the mags both pro and not ment. I don’t perceive that as a real problem. I have and am amazed at the sheer vision exhibited on the enough audio equipment and can scrape together digital and print pages.
    [Show full text]
  • Energy and Modernity in African American Literature Walter A
    “Oh, Awful Power”: Energy and Modernity in African American Literature Walter A. Gordon Submitted in partial fulfilment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Under the Executive Committee Of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2021 © 2021 Walter A. Gordon All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT “Oh, Awful Power”: Energy and Modernity in African American Literature Walter A. Gordon “‘Oh, Awful Power’: Energy and Modernity in African American Literature” analyzes the social and cultural meaning of energy through an examination of African American literature from the first half of the twentieth century—the era of both King Coal and Jim Crow. Situating African Americans as both makers and subjects of the history of modern energy, I argue that black writers from this period understood energy as a material substrate which moves continually across boundaries of body, space, machine, and state. Reconsidering the surface of metaphor which has masked the significant material presence of energy in African American literature— the ubiquity of the racialized descriptor of “coal-black” skin, to take one example—I show how black writers have theorized energy as a simultaneously material, social, and cultural web, at once a medium of control and a conduit for emancipation. African American literature emphasizes how intensely energy impacts not only those who come into contact with its material instantiation as fuel—convict miners, building superintendents—but also those at something of a physical remove, through the more ambient experiences of heat, landscape, and light. By attending to a variety of experiences of energy and the nuances of their literary depiction, “‘Oh, Awful Power’” shows how twentieth-century African American literature not only anticipates some of the later insights of the field now referred to as the Energy Humanities but also illustrates some ways of rethinking the limits of that discourse on interactions between energy, labor, and modernity, especially as they relate to problems of race.
    [Show full text]
  • Extraordinary Encounters: an Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrials and Otherworldly Beings
    EXTRAORDINARY ENCOUNTERS EXTRAORDINARY ENCOUNTERS An Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrials and Otherworldly Beings Jerome Clark B Santa Barbara, California Denver, Colorado Oxford, England Copyright © 2000 by Jerome Clark All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Clark, Jerome. Extraordinary encounters : an encyclopedia of extraterrestrials and otherworldly beings / Jerome Clark. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-57607-249-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 1-57607-379-3 (e-book) 1. Human-alien encounters—Encyclopedias. I. Title. BF2050.C57 2000 001.942'03—dc21 00-011350 CIP 0605040302010010987654321 ABC-CLIO, Inc. 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper I. Manufactured in the United States of America. To Dakota Dave Hull and John Sherman, for the many years of friendship, laughs, and—always—good music Contents Introduction, xi EXTRAORDINARY ENCOUNTERS: AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EXTRATERRESTRIALS AND OTHERWORLDLY BEINGS A, 1 Angel of the Dark, 22 Abductions by UFOs, 1 Angelucci, Orfeo (1912–1993), 22 Abraham, 7 Anoah, 23 Abram, 7 Anthon, 24 Adama, 7 Antron, 24 Adamski, George (1891–1965), 8 Anunnaki, 24 Aenstrians, 10 Apol, Mr., 25
    [Show full text]
  • Climate Change in Fiction Master’S Thesis by Miglė Šaltytė
    Università Ca' Foscari Venezia Climate Change in Fiction Master’s Thesis by Miglė Šaltytė Miglė Šaltytė 1-10-2019 Table of Contents Introduction........................................................................................................................................................2 1. Climate Fiction …………………………………….……………………….................................................5 2. “Serious” Climate-Change Fiction …………................................................................................................8 3. Artistically Compelling Climate-Change Fiction.........................................................................................11 4. What Climate-Change Fiction Reveals About Our Attitudes towards the Human and the Non-Human.…13 5. The Works Chosen and the Structure of the Thesis………………………………………………...….…..14 6. Truth, Politics, and Climate Change…..….......…………………………………………………….….…..15 6.1 Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver……………………………………………………………..…..16 6.2 The State of Fear by Michael Crichton………………………………………………………………..….20 6.3 Solar by Ian McEwan……………………………………………………………………………..………24 7. The Human Point of View in Climate-Chamage Fiction …………………………………………....…….30 7.1 “Shooting the Apocalypse” by Paolo Bacigalupi………………………………………………..………..31 7.2 “A Hundred Hundred Daisies” by Nancy Kress………………………………………………….………34 7.3 “The Mutant Stag at Horn Creek” by Sarah K. Castle……………………………………………..……..36 7.4 “The Tamarisk Hunter” by Paolo Bacigalupi…………………………………………………….………40 8. Climate Change on the Fringe of “Serious” Literature…………………………………………….………43
    [Show full text]
  • Technosignature Report Final 121619
    NASA AND THE SEARCH FOR TECHNOSIGNATURES A Report from the NASA Technosignatures Workshop NOVEMBER 28, 2018 NASA TECHNOSIGNATURES WORKSHOP REPORT CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 What are Technosignatures? .................................................................................................................................... 2 1.2 What Are Good Technosignatures to Look For? ....................................................................................................... 2 1.3 Maturity of the Field ................................................................................................................................................... 5 1.4 Breadth of the Field ................................................................................................................................................... 5 1.5 Limitations of This Document .................................................................................................................................... 6 1.6 Authors of This Document ......................................................................................................................................... 6 2 EXISTING UPPER LIMITS ON TECHNOSIGNATURES ....................................................................................................... 9 2.1 Limits and the Limitations of Limits ...........................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • BLACK HOLES, WORMHOLES, and TIME-MACHINES
    BLACK HOLES, WORMHOLES, and TIME-MACHINES: SURELY YOU MUST BE JOKING, MR. THORNE! A talk given to the Cleveland Philosophical Club March 9, 1993 By Jack Heighway BLACK HOLES, WORMHOLES, and TIME-MACHINES: SUREL Y YOU MUST BE JOKING, MR. THORN~! Until recently, time travel was thought of as a literary device employed for the most part by science-fiction hacks. Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. and H.G. Wells' The Time Machine provide the required exceptions. To my knowledge, no reputable scientist in those days ever suggested that time travel was actually feasible. I should say here that we will in this talk consider only time travel to the past. Going forward in time is commonplace- every system in the universe does it- unavoidably. Of course, if one wants to go very far into the future, one must develop new technologies - cryogenics or relativistic time dilation, or whatever. This may be very difficult, but it involves no contradiction. In contrast, going backward in time can involve logical contradiction, and it is this aspect of time travel that I want to explore. Here, for instance, is a gem of a paradox invented by Rudy Rucker, a mathematician and very gifted popularizer of science. This is from his book, The Fourth Dimension. An inventor is in his laboratory, struggling to assemble a working time-machine. Suddenly there is a flash of light, and a man from the future appears, riding a lovely time-machine. "I'm an historian," says the man from the future. "I want to interview you, as you are the inventor of the time-machine." "But I don't know how to build one yet," replies the inventor.
    [Show full text]
  • OPUNTIA of Giant Vehicles
    THERE WERE GIANTS IN THE EARTH IN THOSE FUTURES by Dale Speirs While thinning out my library, I saw that I had a number of books on the theme OPUNTIA of giant vehicles. I’ve always been interested in the practical details of such vehicles. If a supervillain has his own personal giant submarine, how does he schedule his crews? How does he get them to keep their mouths shut? Drydocks for maintenance and repairs are not cheap. Somebody has to flush out the bilges or empty the garbage cans. One wonders about these things. 278 Middle June 2014 There Go The Ships: There Is That Leviathan. CV (1985, hardcover) by Damon Knight is about the Sea Venture, a giant Opuntia is published by Dale Speirs, Calgary, Alberta. Since you are reading floating city the size of eight ocean liners and nicknamed CV. It is a raft, has this only online, my real-mail address doesn’t matter. My eek-mail address (as no propulsive engines, and floats along the North Pacific Gyre. Half the the late Harry Warner Jr liked to call it) is: [email protected] population on board are permanent residents who provide the services for the When sending me an emailed letter of comment, please include your name and other half, the tourists. The CV is submersible and can sink down below town in the message. storms, an important point since it cannot maneuver on the surface. The corporation that owns CV is trying to make it self-sufficient, growing hydroponic vegetables on board, harvesting fish as it floats along, and scraping the bottom for minerals to bring in some cash income.
    [Show full text]
  • Science Fiction Jack Kirby
    The Science Fiction Work of Jack Kirby Adam McGovern with Randolph Hoppe Winter Con 3 December 2016 Queens, NYC From the Gutter… Jack Kirby famously had the course of his career set when a discarded science-fiction pulp — Wonder Stories — floated past him in a tenement gutter. This opened up both his future, and a lot of the world’s. Painting by Steve Rude Streetwise (Alternate), TwoMorrows Publishing, 2000 Painting by Steve Rude Streetwise, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2000 ...to the Cosmos! Painting by Frank Paul Wonder Stories, December 1932 Decades later, Kirby would speak of sensing the cosmos inside of him — for those of us who needed introducing, he would portray it for us in realms of the Marvel and DC universes that became signature territories in both those companies’ mythos. Detail from “Super War!” by Kirby, Colletta, Costanza, Serpe(?) Forever People 2, DC Comics, May 1971. Spread from “...And One Shall Save Him!” by Kirby, Lee, Sinnott, Rosen, Goldberg(?) Fantastic Four 62, Marvel Comics, May 1967. But even in the 1930s, he was reading as much science as science-fiction — as early as the underground hidden-society adventure Blue Bolt he and partner Joe Simon were imagining alternate dimensions, when physical space-travel was still a dawning fantasy for many. Page 5 from “Blue Bolt” by Kirby, Simon, Avison, Gabriele, Ferguson, ? Blue Bolt 5, Novelty Press, October 1940 Science was the source of many of Kirby’s most iconic heroes’ powers — perhaps most famously Captain America, accepting a super-serum that was like a magic potion for an era where the gods couldn’t necessarily be relied on.
    [Show full text]
  • Ultimate Powers Book
    RANGE TABLES Rank Range A Range B Range C Range D Range E Feeble Contact Contact 1 area 10 feet 2 miles Poor 1 area 1 area 10 areas 1 area 25 miles Typical 2 areas 5 areas 1 mile 4 areas 250 miles Good 4 areas 10 areas 3 miles 16 areas 2500 miles Excellent 6 areas 25 areas 6 miles 64 areas 25,000 miles Remarkable 8 areas 1 mile 12 miles 6 miles 250,000 miles Incredible 11 areas 2 miles 25 miles 250 miles 2.5 million miles Amazing 20 areas 3 miles 50 miles 1000 miles 25 million miles Monstrous 40 areas 6 miles 120 miles 4000 miles 250 million miles Unearthly 60 areas 10 miles 250 miles 16,000 miles 2.5 billion miles Shift X 80 areas 15 miles 500 miles 64,000 miles 25 billion miles Shift Y 160 areas 30 miles 1200 miles 250,000 miles 250 billion miles Shift Z 400 areas 50 miles 2500 miles 1 million miles 1/2 light year CL1000 100 miles 80 miles 5000 miles 4 million miles .5 light years CL3000 10,000 miles 150 miles 12,000 miles 16 million miles 50 light years CL5000 100,000 miles 250 miles 250,000 miles 64 million miles 500 light years AREA OF EFFECT Rank Name Radius (in feet) Area Volume Feeble 1 3 sq. ft. 3 cu. ft. Poor 2 12 sq. ft. 25 cu. ft. Typical 4 200 sq. ft. 200 cu. ft. Good 10 314 sq. ft. 3,140 cu. ft. Excellent 15 707 sq.
    [Show full text]