The Vortex Blaster
Dust-jacket from the Gnome Press edition
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| Author | Edward E. Smith, Ph.D. |
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| Cover artist | W.I. Van der Poel, Jr. (Gnome Press) Edd Cartier (Fantasy Press) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction short stories |
| Publisher | Gnome Press and Fantasy Press |
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Publication date
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1960 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 191 pp |
| OCLC | 1508976 |
The Vortex Blaster is a collection of three science fiction short stories by author Edward E. Smith, Ph.D.. It was simultaneously published in 1960 by Gnome Press in an edition of 3,000 copies and by Fantasy Press in an edition of 341 copies. The book was originally intended to be published by Fantasy Press, but was handed over to Gnome Press when Fantasy Press folded. Lloyd Eshbach, of Fantasy Press, who was responsible for the printing of both editions, printed the extra copies for his longtime customers. The stories originally appeared in the magazines Comet and Astonishing Stories.
In 1968, Pyramid Books issued a paperback edition under the title Masters of the Vortex, promoting it as "the final adventure in the famous Lensman series." While the stories are set in the same universe as the Lensman novels, they are only tangentially related. They reference events that happen in the Lensman series, but only “off stage”. No characters from the other Lensmen books show up in this book. From the events spoken of in this book it apparently falls between Second Stage Lensmen and Children of the Lens.
The hero of the book is Neal "Storm" Cloud. Although the story happens in the “Lensman” universe he is not a Lensman. Instead he is a nuclear engineer with an amazingly mathematical mind. He is a high level genius and a lightning calculator. In his universe there is something we have apparently don't have in ours, self-sustaining vortices of atomic energy. These are like a small piece of the heart of a star. A churning vortex of heat and light that slowly grows while consuming whatever it is in contact with. In theory they can be blown out by a precise amount of explosives, placed at an exact spot in the vortex, at exactly the right time. The problem is, it takes the best computers available hours to calculate the factors needed, and only seconds are available to get the correct amount of explosives on target. Also, if you try to blow one out, but don't get the factors right, all you do is split the vortex into many separate vortices and scatter them far and wide, and soon each is as dangerous as the original. Although Storm Cloud, being a nuclear engineer and lightning calculator, should be able to calculate the factors and extinguish a vortex, in practice he can't. It would be very dangerous and Storm has a wife and kids, and putting himself in that kind of danger ties his mind up with worry so much that he just can't do it.
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Wikipedia