For Linda

Early in 1979 I published a novel, The Fountains of Paradise, in which an engineer named Morgan, builder of the longest bridge in the world, tackles a far more ambitious project — an “orbital tower” extending from a point on the equator to geostationary orbit. Its purpose: to replace the noisy, polluting and energy-wasteful rocket by a far more efficient electric elevator system. The construction material is a crystalline carbon filter, and a key device in the plot is a machine named “Spider.”

A few months later another novel appeared in which an engineer named Merlin, builder of the longest bridge in the world, tackles a far more ambitious project — an “orbital tower,” etc. etc. The construction material is a crystalline silicon fiber, and a key device in the plot is a machine named “Spider”…

A clear case of plagiarism? No — merely an idea whose time has come. And I’m astonished that it hasn’t come sooner.

The concept of the “space elevator” was first published in the West in 1966 by John Isaacs and his team at La Jolla. They were greatly surprised to discover that a Leningrad engineer, Yuri Artsutanov, had anticipated them in 1960; his name for the device was a “cosmic funicular.” There have since been at least three other independent “inventions” of the idea.

I first mentioned it in a speech to the American Institute of Architects in May 1967 (see “Technology and the Future” in Report on Planet Three) and more recently (July 1975) in an address to the House of Representatives Space Committee (see The View From Serendip). However, although I had been thinking about The Fountains of Paradise for almost two decades, it was not until a very few years ago that I decided to use the orbital tower as its theme. One reason for my reluctance was, I suspect, an unconscious fear that, surely, some science-fiction writer would soon latch on to such a gorgeous idea. Then I decided that I simply had to use it — even if Larry Niven came out first…