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Noise Level
Mar. 12th, 2012 02:30 pmI was reading an interview with Paul Di Filippo in the latest Locus where he mentions the story Noise Level by Raymond F. Jones. I remember that story. I read it first as a teenager over forty years ago. I even picked up a copy of the December 1952 issue of Astounding that it appeared in.
The basic plot is that a group of scientiest are shown a film of a man demonstrating an anti-gravity machine but he dies during the demonstration and the machine is destroyed. The scientists' task is to work out how he did it. Finally, someone comes up with an idea and produces a machine - much bigger than that in the film - that works. At which point they are told that the film was a hoax, the inventor an actor, and the whole thing was done to get them to build an anti-gravity machine now that they knew it was possible.
Curiously, Di Filippo gives a precis of the story in which he says the scientists are told that the film was obtained by spies of a Soviet invention and the scientists are urged to make the invention to bring them back to parity with the Soviets. I didn't remember this element of the story so I went back and checked. It isn't there. The person who convenes the meeting of scientists tells them at the outset that the inventor approached them with his invention. I couldn't see any mention of the Soviets anywhere.
Isn't it odd how our memory plays tricks. (Well, not mine, obviously.)
Incidently, the ISFDb says this story is part of the Martin Nagle series. Martin Nagle is certainly the name of the viewpoint character. So I clicked on the link to see what other stories where in the series. This was the only one. How can a single story be a series?
The basic plot is that a group of scientiest are shown a film of a man demonstrating an anti-gravity machine but he dies during the demonstration and the machine is destroyed. The scientists' task is to work out how he did it. Finally, someone comes up with an idea and produces a machine - much bigger than that in the film - that works. At which point they are told that the film was a hoax, the inventor an actor, and the whole thing was done to get them to build an anti-gravity machine now that they knew it was possible.
Curiously, Di Filippo gives a precis of the story in which he says the scientists are told that the film was obtained by spies of a Soviet invention and the scientists are urged to make the invention to bring them back to parity with the Soviets. I didn't remember this element of the story so I went back and checked. It isn't there. The person who convenes the meeting of scientists tells them at the outset that the inventor approached them with his invention. I couldn't see any mention of the Soviets anywhere.
Isn't it odd how our memory plays tricks. (Well, not mine, obviously.)
Incidently, the ISFDb says this story is part of the Martin Nagle series. Martin Nagle is certainly the name of the viewpoint character. So I clicked on the link to see what other stories where in the series. This was the only one. How can a single story be a series?
