Rocket to Limbo

Key takeaways

Rocket to Limbo belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Rocket to Limbo to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Rocket to Limbo from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Rocket to Limbo is a 1957 science fiction novel by Alan E. Nourse. It was first published in book form by David McKay Co., Inc, and was later incorporated into an Ace Double (with Echo in the Skull, by John Brunner). It first appeared in the October 1957 issue of Satellite Science Fiction.

Plot On the afternoon of 3 March 2008, the Star Ship Argonaut lifted off from Earth and set course on the Long Passage to Alpha Centauri. The builders intended that the crew establish a colony on one of Alpha Centauri's planets and then bring Argonaut back to Earth. The ship never returned and no trace of her was ever found. In the year 2351 Lars Heldrigsson joined the crew of the Star Ship Ganymede, scheduled to fly to Vega III. Once the ship entered space, Lars and the other 21 crewmen discovered that the ship was actually going to the planet Wolf IV to search for the lost Star Ship Planetfall. This unprecedented change of plan was made more disturbing by the presence of fusion bombs in the ship's hold. Angry at being effectively shanghaied onto a dangerous mission, some of the crew attempted to take control the ship. The mutiny failed and, threatened with abandonment in interstellar space, the mutineers agreed to continue on the mission. Wolf IV was a cold, gray, cloud-covered planet. On arrival, a scout spotted what appeared to be the wreckage of the Planetfall lying on a mountainside, and also caught a glimpse of what he took to be a city in a valley beyond the mountains. The crew landed Ganymede on a river delta 75 miles from the wreck, and landing parties went out to familiarize themselves with the environment. At night the mutineers sabotaged the communications equipment and returned to the ship. Lars discovered the betrayal and he and other crewmen pursued the mutineers, but when they got back to the delta the ship had vanished, though no one heard or saw it blast off. With no other option available to them, the men made the arduous climb to the wreck, hoping to find food, generators to recharge the batteries in their heater suits, and possibly a means of communicating with Earth. But the wreck is not the Planetfall, it is the Argonaut. The men's last, faint hope was to find the city that the scout thought he saw in the next valley. The men trudged onward, over the pass, and down into the valley. The fog lifted and the men saw a three-dimensional kaleidoscope, filled with people, floating several hundred feet above a meadow. Lars was taken into the city where he met Peter Bingham, Ganymede's other Officer-in-Training. Lars and Peter were treated as honored guests by the City-people, who possessed telekinetic powers (which they call teledynamics), the ability to change the forms of matter and energy by thought. Meanwhile, Planetfall and Ganymede were being kept in storage, with their crews in state of deep sleep. The City-people subjected Lars and Peter to some kind of training but were unable to explain what it was meant to accomplish. They eventually discovered that they were being trained to develop their own teledynamic abilities, and that the training succeeded. The City-people, descendants of the babies that aliens found in the wreck of the Argonaut, then freed the other men and allowed them to take their ships back to Earth, with Lars and Peter as ambassadors of a new order of reality. The breaking of the plot deadlock - by having Lars and Peter develop the latent psychic powers that the City-people had been nurturing in them - resembles a similar breaking of a plot deadlock found in The Angry Espers by Lloyd Biggle, Jr., in which an Earthman stranded on a strange planet must develop his latent psychic abilities in order to deal with the beings around him.

Publication history 1957, USA, David McKay, OCLC #586602, Hardback (198 pp). 1957, USA, Renown Publications, Inc., Satellite Science Fiction (Oct 1957), digest (132 pp). 1959, USA, Ace Books (Ace Double #D-385), Pub date Sep 1959, Paperback (162 pp). 1961, Spain, Editorial Cenit (#9), Madrid, as El Planeta Gris (The Gray Planet). 1964, UK, Faber & Faber (London), (174 pp) 1964, Germany, Arthur Moewig Verlag (Munich)(Terra Sonderband #89), 172 pp, as Phantom-City. 1986, USA, Ace Books, ISBN 0-441-73339-5, Pub date Oct 1986, Paperback (185 pp).

Reviews The book was reviewed by

S. E. Cotts at Amazing Science Fiction Stories (Jan 1960) Frederik Pohl at If (Mar 1960) P. Schuyler Miller at Astounding/Analog Science Fact & Fiction (Jun 1960) Floyd C. Gale at Galaxy Science Fiction (August 1960) Patricia Altner at Fantasy Review (Dec 1986)

References Notes

Sources

Clute, John. "Nourse, Alan E." The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Eds. John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls and Graham Sleight. Gollancz, 4 Nov. 2014. Web. 8 Nov. 2014. Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago: Advent. pg. 333. ISBN 0-911682-20-1.

Listings The book is listed at

The Library of Congress as 57012177 The British Library as UIN = BLL01002679137

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Rocket to Limbo

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Rocket to Limbo claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Rocket to Limbo before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Rocket to Limbo ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Rocket to Limbo

In research: Rocket to Limbo appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Rocket to Limbo in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Rocket to Limbo is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1957 American novels, 1957 English-language novels, 1957 science fiction novels, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Rocket to Limbo outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Rocket to Limbo in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Rocket to Limbo means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Rocket to Limbo out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Rocket to Limbo in simple terms?

Rocket to Limbo is a 1957 science fiction novel by Alan E. Nourse.

Why does Rocket to Limbo matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Rocket to Limbo?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Rocket to Limbo.