Translator's error: Classic Book Guide and Free Edition
Translator's error: author and translator credits, catalogue synopsis, subjects and links to the Gutenberg reading formats.
Translator's error is catalogued by Project Gutenberg with author credits for Dye, Charles (1925–1960).
Catalogue synopsis
Project Gutenberg supplies this automated synopsis of the opening text:
Translator's error by Charles Dye is a science fiction short story written in the mid-20th century. It follows a Martian terraforming effort that collapses due to a fundamental misreading of the planet’s native telepaths and the true role of the moisture-devouring “Blotting Pads.” On Mars, Administrator Richard Potterboy arrives to find project chief Philip Grisby and new historian Theodore McGinnis facing disaster: the final polar-melting furnaces have vanished into the ice, dooming plans to fill the canals and kill Pads with high-tension cables along the banks. As they cross the desert, Grisby explains the Pads’ baffling properties and the Cones—seemingly degenerate, telepathic natives—who once tried to warn humans about water. At the planet’s sole surviving ruins—two indestructible walls—the men study murals that chronicle Mars’s fall from a lush, high culture to a sandy wasteland as Pads multiply and the Cones atrophy underground. After they leave, a coda reveals the truth: the Cones remain sapient, view liquid water as deadly, and command the Pads as organic robots; they even sabotaged the furnaces. When a deuterium water sphere finally splits against the wall, the Pads rush in at the Cones’ mental command to blot the “life-destroyer,” and the natives return to calm contemplation, their world protected from rehydration.
Book and edition facts
- Title: Translator's error
- Author credits: Dye, Charles (1925–1960)
- Catalogue language: English
Catalogue subjects
- Mars (Planet) -- Fiction
- Science fiction
- Short stories
Read this edition
View the complete Gutenberg catalogue record. Project Gutenberg identifies this edition as public domain in the United States; that designation does not establish its copyright status in every country.
Source notes
Catalogue metadata is public domain and is supplied through Gutendex, which imports Gutenberg's machine-readable catalogue. The automated synopsis is source-supplied, not an independently verified review. Author dates above describe the credited people; no ebook release date is presented as the book's original publication date.
Sources
More in Books & Authors
Keep reading
