Science
The science in the "Skylark" series, while not entirely accurate, is believable: Newton's laws are obeyed, planets circle suns; there is description of something like a black hole or neutron star; and matter-energy conversion propels the spacecraft. The observation that a spaceship has covered a distance apparently impossible in the time elapsed is met with the response "Einstein's theory is still a theory. That distance is an observed fact"; such effects as time dilation and mass increase are simply ignored. This claim had more potential validity in the 1920s, when the story was written, than it holds at present; much like now-known-incorrect depictions of Venus or Mars in other classic space opera, it must be allowed as "poetic license".
Read more about this topic: Skylark (series)
Famous quotes containing the word science:
“Science is a dynamic undertaking directed to lowering the degree of the empiricism involved in solving problems; or, if you prefer, science is a process of fabricating a web of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiments and observations and fruitful of further experiments and observations.”
—James Conant (1893–1978)
“The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed, it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. But that is not our science.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)