"Neutron Tide" is a short story by British writer
Arthur C. Clarke, first published in 1970 in
Galaxy Science Fiction
''Galaxy Science Fiction'' was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published in Boston from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by a French-Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break into the American market. World Editi ...
.
Page at Internet Speculative Fiction Database
/ref> It is among his shortest pieces of writing, consisting solely of a 2-page, detailed description of a futuristic scenario in order to use a pun as a punch-line, a play on the title
The Title are a British four-piece indie band based in Stoke-on-Trent, England, and signed with Sons Ltd.national anthem
A national anthem is a patriotic musical composition symbolizing and evoking eulogies of the history and traditions of a country or nation. The majority of national anthems are marches or hymns in style. American, Central Asian, and European n ...
. The story was reprinted later in the 1978 Starlord summer special.
Plot summary
Clarke describes a space battleship
A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ...
flying too close to the gravitational field of a neutron star
A neutron star is the collapsed core of a massive supergiant star, which had a total mass of between 10 and 25 solar masses, possibly more if the star was especially metal-rich. Except for black holes and some hypothetical objects (e.g. white ...
, and subsequently being torn to bits by the high tidal forces. A military commander revealing this in a meeting says the only identifiable piece of debris was from an engineer's toolkit, a star-mangled spanner
A wrench or spanner is a tool used to provide grip and mechanical advantage in applying torque to turn objects—usually rotary fasteners, such as nuts and bolts—or keep them from turning.
In the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zeala ...
.
See also
* "Neutron Star
A neutron star is the collapsed core of a massive supergiant star, which had a total mass of between 10 and 25 solar masses, possibly more if the star was especially metal-rich. Except for black holes and some hypothetical objects (e.g. white ...
", a 1966 science fiction short story by Larry Niven
Laurence van Cott Niven (; born April 30, 1938) is an American science fiction writer. His best-known works are ''Ringworld'' (1970), which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards, and, with Jerry Pournelle, ''The Mote in God's Eye'' ...
* "Feghoot A feghoot (also known as a story pun or poetic story joke) is a humorous short story or vignette ending in a pun (typically a play on a well-known phrase), where the story contains sufficient context to recognize the punning humor. History
Ferdinan ...
", a short story designed to end with a pun
References
External links
*
1970 short stories
Short stories by Arthur C. Clarke
Fiction set around neutron stars
Works originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction
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