ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Thinking Outside the "Plot"!
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Concerning the concept of an "energy being" (a non-corporeal life form) using a machine as it's "body", it occurred to me that if the life form was capable of moving objects around, why would it need the machine?

But then I realized that if the life form could only use magnetism to move iron-bearing metals like steel, it could manipulate the handles and pedals on the bulldozer to use the machine as its "body".

The alien in the story starts out inhabiting a stony-iron meteorite, but this didn't give it the ability to manipulate its environment!

And if the maximum force the alien was able to apply with it's magnetic abilities was just enough to pull and push the bulldozer's controls, the alien could use the machine for exactly the same purpose as humans do — to employ mechanical advantage as a mean to amplify what we can do on our own!

Very clever of Theodore Sturgeon! He obviously thought of all this when he wrote the book.

~ A Question for the Members: If a large invasion force of these aliens came to Earth and possessed thousands of our machines — like tanks, aircraft, and Navel vessels — how could we combat them when they would be able to take over our own large military weapons and use them against us?

~ My Theory: First of all, if the alien invasion force was not sufficiently large to possess ALL our large military machines, they wouldn't be able to take over our complete arsenal of mechanized weapons. Therefore, some of our military machinery would still be under our control.

However, even if they WERE extremely large, the other armies around the world would be able to fight them!

Add to this the idea that our military would be able to hastily replace key components of our mechanized weapons (tanks, aircraft, etc) with parts made of non-metallic materials such as plastics and ceramics.

This would prevent the aliens from controlling these machines, so that some of our tanks, aircraft, etc could still be used to combat the alien-controlled versions of our own machines.
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Hot damn, I love coming up with stuff like this! I know I'm not the only All Sci-Fi member who enjoys thinking of cool sci-fi ideas!

With that in mind . . . it's your turn, guys!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)