The Science Fiction of Bob Shaw

Just discovered a heap of Bob Shaw books buried in a forgotten corner. Ah, the joyful anticipation of rereading some old favourites!

Bob’s concept of slow glass is one of those science fiction ideas from heaven. It’s a dream of a concept that gets right under your skin and just wriggles there. In case you don’t know, slow glass simply transmits light at a slower rate than usual. The thicker the glass, the slower the light moves. Bob teases a wealth of material from this apparently simple concept, from streetlights that use 12-hour slow glass to store up sunlight and let it out at night, to a piece of slow glass through which a murder might be observed … when the light finally comes through.

Another of Bob Shaw’s ideas that always tickled me (I think it was in Who Goes Here?) was his FTL drive that involved a teleportation transmitter at the back of the ship and a receiver at the front. The ship teleports itself in a series of jumps, each one exactly the length of its own hull. Like a cosmic inchworm. Since each individual jump is pretty much instantaneous, so is the whole journey. That story was played for laughs but Bob was mostly a serious writer. And without doubt the master of the high concept from left field.

Finding these books again is a bit like watching something come through slow glass. Nice to have them in the light again. Orbitsville here I come!