Forgotten books emerge from slow glass

Just discovered a heap of Bob Shaw books buried in a forgotten corner. Ah, the joyful anticipation of rereading some old favourites!

Bob's concept of slow glass is still one of those ideas from heaven - a dream of an idea that gets right under your skin and just wriggles there. In case you don't know, slow glass simply transmits light at a slower rate than usual. The thicker the glass, the slower the transmission. Bob teases a wealth of material from this apparently simple concept, from streetlights that use 12-hour slow glass to store up sunlight and let it out at night, to a piece of glass through which a murder may be observed ... when the light finally comes through.

Another of his ideas that always tickled me (I think it was in Who Goes Here?) was his FTL drive that involved a teleportation transmitter at the back of the ship and a receiver at the front. The ship teleports itself in a series of jumps, each one exactly the length of its own hull. Like a cosmic inchworm. And since each individual jump is pretty much instantaneous, so's the whole journey. That story was played for laughs but Bob was mostly a serious writer. And without doubt the master of the high concept from left field.

Finding these books again is a bit like watching something come through slow glass. Nice to have them in the light again. Orbitsville here I come!