[LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[John Cowan]

Rob Seaman scripsit:


> I was referring to the Asimov novel - agoraphobe detective and his  

> positronic partner.


Yes, I know.  I forget in exactly which of his thousand or so essays
Asimov coined the phrase "planetary chauvinism" for the belief that
human civilization (in later uses, life) can only exist on or near
the surfaces of planets, but the term is definitely out there:
415 Google hits, including a Wikipedia article and a 1971 _Time_
magazine essay called "Is There Life On Mars?"


> Asimov's fiction is firmly located in the so-called hard SF realm of

> nuts and bolts and the laws of physics.


Well, unless you count hyperspace travel and subspace communication,
time travel (in _The End Of Eternity_), and a bunch of very clear
fantasy stories written near the end of his life, then I don't think so.
If anything, the _Heaven Chronicles_ are closer to what is known to be
known: slower-than-light starships, for example.

-- 
In my last lifetime,                            John Cowan
I believed in reincarnation;                    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
in this lifetime,                               cowan at ccil.org
I don't.  --Thiagi