This is the last of my daily run of blog posts for now, marking the 30th post in a row! Most of them have been on invisibility in fiction, and we wrap with a fascinating example. I’ve still got more invisibility to post, but I won’t try to do them every day…
Is there a word for finding the correct thing by mistake? That is basically what happened with the next story of invisibility to discuss, “Cloak of Aesir,” by Don A. Stuart, published in the March 1939 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction.
So why was I mistaken? Well, here’s the description of “Cloak of Aesir” from the table of contents:
A man and the Sarn-Mother and a cloak of blackness— and the old Sarn-Mothcr couldn’t hate that human enemy!
The description of the “cloak of blackness” is what caught my attention, as it certainly sounds like something invisible-y! In the story, however, the cloak is easy to spot in most circumstances, as long as there is light around. Nevertheless, the story also includes invisibility devices, so I found an invisibility story for the wrong reason!
But this story is special for another reason: it uses some physics to explain the “Cloak of Aesir” that I’ve never seen in a science fiction story before! So let’s take a look. Significant spoilers ahead, so if you want you can read the story in advance.
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