Future människor bygger med smuts, gå i krig över små mängder av det

Det här låter lite som Willard Hawkins novell " Dwindling Sphere , "ursprungligen publicerad i Förvånande Science Fiction i mars 1940. Historien var ett tidigt exempel på ekologisk science fiction. Det tekniska begreppet är att en liten grupp ingenjörer / forskare har upptäckt en materiell-transmutationsprocess - ungefär som replikatortekniken på Star Trek - med egenskapen att massan av det nya objektet alltid är mindre än massa av råmaterialet som används för att producera det.

It is very puzzling, for the fact remains that the lump has been reduced to a fraction of its original weight and size. There is, after all, only one possible answer: the greater part of its mass must have been converted into energy. The question, then, is what became, of the energy?

Tekniken blir snabbt en bestämd process för mänsklig civilisation:

Actually, the discovery appears to have been an accident. Frank Baxter took no interest in its development—regarded it as of little account. Think of it! An invention more revolutionary than the discovery of fire, yet its inventor failed entirely to grasp its importance! To the end of his days it was to him merely a by‑product.

Historien berättas som en serie av journalposter från efterföljare av uppfinnaren av materia-transformationsprocessen genom åren och millennierna. I den sista posten nämns månens storlek relativt jorden:

I have no doubt he will return later with some other fantastic delusion. On one occasion it was the legend that, instead of being twin planets, our earth and Luna were at one time of differing sizes, and that Luna revolved around the earth as some of the distant moons revolve around their primaries. This theory has been thoroughly discredited. It is true that there is a reduction of the earth's mass every time we scrape its surface to produce according to our needs; but it is incredible that the earth could ever have been several times the size of its companion planet, as these imaginative theorists would have us believe.

Och det fanns verkligen resurserskrig över smuts:

The Eighty Years' War is over... Chief among the basic causes, of course, were the disputes, between adjoining districts over the right to extend their conversion pits beyond certain boundaries.

"Dwindling Sphere" har dykt upp i flera antologier, inklusive Isaac Asimov presenterar The Great SF Stories 2 (1940) , redigerad av Isaac Asimov, 18 Storaste Science Fiction Stories redigerad av Lawrence Jannifer, och andra .

En bra läsning, och jag minns det ofta ...