science

The Wailing Asteroid

The Wailing Asteroid is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Wailing Asteroid rather than just read about it. In short: The Wailing Asteroid is a science-fiction novel written by Murray Leinster (William Fitzgerald Jenkins) and first published in 1960 by Avon Books. It presents the theme of the lone inventor who saves Earth from cosmic danger and introduces humanity to an unknown civilization.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

The Wailing Asteroid is a science-fiction novel written by Murray Leinster (William Fitzgerald Jenkins) and first published in 1960 by Avon Books. It presents the theme of the lone inventor who saves Earth from cosmic danger and introduces humanity to an unknown civilization. The novel was adapted for film by John Brunner as The Terrornauts in 1967.

Plot When satellite-tracking stations around the world begin receiving radio signals from deep space, Joe Burke, owner of a small engineering company, is about to propose marriage to Sandy Lund, a woman he has known since high school. The signals consist of a repeated series of flute-like notes, which Joe recognizes. Joe plays for Sandy a tape recording he made a year earlier and it sounds just like the signal from space. Joe explains that he got the notes from a lucid dream that has come to him off and on since he was eleven. In the dream he is on a world with two moons and trees with ribbon-like leaves and he is holding a strange weapon, a kind of recoilless pistol. In his shop he makes a modified version of the weapon and when he tests it, it breaks loose from the workbench and slams into a wall hard enough to shatter the bricks. Meanwhile astronomers trace the signal to an asteroid, M-387, and send a radio signal to it. In response the asteroid changes its signal. With the help of Holmes, a yacht builder, Keller, an electronics expert, and several workmen, Joe builds a small spaceship propelled by a reactionless drive based on his modification of the recoilless pistol. Just in time the ship is finished and, with Holmes, Keller, Sandy, and Sandy’s sister Pam aboard, Joe lifts off just as the police arrive to end the project. Pursued by Nike missiles, Joe takes the ship into space and heads for Asteroid M-387. After eleven days of travel they arrive at the asteroid and see only a radio mast and the entrance to a tunnel. When they fly their ship into the tunnel a door closes behind them, lights come on, and the tunnel fills with air and artificial gravity. Finding the air breathable, the five impromptu astronauts explore the asteroid. They discover that it is a vast, empty fortress with unknown weapons still in their racks and a control room where the fluting signal originates. In one room Joe finds thousands of small black cubes. When he dozes off next to one he has a lucid dream of taking part in a weapons drill. He understands that the dream that has obsessed him since childhood must have come from a fragment of a similar cube that had been found in a Cro-Magnon cave with artifacts dated to 20,000 B.C. Sandy suggests looking for cube readers, reasoning that learning from a cube by sleeping near it is inefficient. They find a pair of reading helmets and quickly begin learning all about the fortress, its weapons, and an implacable Enemy with which the garrison’s civilization may have been at war for 100,000 years or more. They also learn that the Enemy has sent a new attack, one that will rip apart the Solar System in a matter of days. Using a procedure that Keller develops, Joe, Holmes, and Keller modify three hundred of the torpedoes they find in the fortress and launch them. The ten-foot spheres accelerate toward the enemy squadron at 160-gees, approaching the speed of light in little over two days. The torpedoes obliterate the Enemy’s squadron and everyone breathes a sigh of relief. Then Joe notes that in a few centuries humanity will have to go out into interstellar space to look for the Enemy.

Publication history 1960, USA & Canada, Avon Books (#T-483), Pub date Dec 1960, Paperback (143 pp)

Reviews The book was reviewed by

S. E. Cotts at Amazing Stories (May 1961) P. Schuyler Miller at Analog Science Fact/Fiction (Jul 1961)

References Notes

Sources

Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago: Advent. pg. 244. ISBN 0-911682-20-1.

Listings The book is listed at

The Library of Congress as LCCN 97-821805 WorldCat as OCLC 7358691

External links Go to Archive.org to hear a Librivox recording of the story.

The Wailing Asteroid at Project Gutenberg The Wailing Asteroid public domain audiobook at LibriVox

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Wailing Asteroid

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Wailing Asteroid 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 The Wailing Asteroid 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 The Wailing Asteroid 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 The Wailing Asteroid

In research: The Wailing Asteroid 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 The Wailing Asteroid 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: The Wailing Asteroid is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1960 American novels, 1960 English-language novels, 1960 science fiction novels, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Wailing Asteroid 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.

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How to study The Wailing Asteroid in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Wailing Asteroid 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 The Wailing Asteroid out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Wailing Asteroid in simple terms?

Why does The Wailing Asteroid 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 The Wailing Asteroid?

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 The Wailing Asteroid.