Det låter som "Ingen kopiering tillåten" , en redaktionell av John W. Campbell, Jr. i November 1948 Förvånande Science Fiction . Den fullständiga texten finns tillgänglig på Internetarkiv .
Detta var mer av en uppsats i en samling av sci-fi-historier (till exempel i stället för en verklig historia) som jag läste kanske i slutet av 1960-talet.
Den redaktionen återges i en 1966-bok som heter Samlade redaktioner från analog av John W. Campbell (utvald av Harry Harrison ); hela boken finns tillgänglig på Internetarkiv . Såvitt jag vet är det det enda stället du kunde ha läst det i slutet av 1960-talet, utanför en gammal kopia av november 1948 Häpnadsväckande . Det är givetvis en samling essäer, inte en samling av sci-fi-historier. Det visade sig också i Turningspunkter: Essays on the science fiction-konst , en 1977 fiktion antologi redigerad av Damon Knight . Men om du verkligen läser den i en samling av sci-fi berättelser , är den tidigaste möjligheten som ISFDB känner till Stanley Schmidt 1980s Analog antologi # 1 , som också publiceras som Analogs Golden Anniversary Anthology och Femtiotalet av den bästa science fictionen från analog .
En missil från (circa) 1968 hittades 1940
Scenariot är inställt 20 år tidigare än det:
Let's first consider this situation: Time: About 1920. Place: An
American Army Air Base. Action: High overhead a small airplane tears across the sky with a high, thin whistle. Ground observers, after tracking it for a minute or so—during which time
it has passed out of sight—report incredulously that it was doing
between nine hundred fifty and one thousand miles per hour.
It circles back, slows abruptly as the whistle dies out, and makes
a hot, deadstick landing. Investigators reach the cornfield where
it landed, and find it ninety percent intact—and one hundred
percent impossible. Swept-back wings, no tail, automatic control
equipment of incredibly advanced design, are all understandable
in so far as function intended goes. But the metal alloys used
make no sense to the metallurgists when they go to work on them.
The "engine," moreover, is simply, starkly insane. The only indication of anything that might remotely be considered an engine
is a single, open tube—really open; open at both ends. But the
empty fuel tank had tubes leading into some sort of small jets in
that pipe. The athodyd being unheard of in 1920, the thing is
senseless. Filling the fuel tanks simply causes a hot fire that must
be extinguished quickly to prevent burning out the tube. The fact
that this is a guided missile intended for launching from a four-hundred-mile-an-hour bomber makes the situation a little difficult
for the 1920 technologists; the athodyd won't start functioning
below two hundred fifty m.p.h., and nothing on Earth could reach
that speed in 1920.
Grunden var att forskare skulle gissa att missilen var från 1000 år till framtiden snarare än bara 20-30 år framåt.
In summary, the aerodynamicists report that the tailless monstrosity is interesting, but the principles of its design are confusing. The engine group report the "engine," so-called, can't be the
engine. It was thought for a while that it might be a rocket, but
since both ends are, and always were, wide open, it can't possibly be a rocket. The radio experts of the Signal Corps agree that
some of the equipment is an immeasurably advanced type of
radio apparatus, but the design is so advanced that it is futile
to study it. It can't be reproduced, and involves principles evidently several centuries ahead of the knowledge of 1920—so advanced that the missing, intermediate steps are too many to be
bridged.