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ChatGPT thinks the story you’re referring to is “a meeting with Medusa” by Arthur C. Clarke [1]

The plot summary on Wikipedia doesn’t mention the staggered shells, but it does sound like this might be right [2]

1. https://chat.openai.com/share/476fb915-6037-47dd-8c06-095fd2...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Meeting_with_Medusa



Oh, that's a very nice use of ChatGPT. This sort of question is usually impossibly hard to find by searching, and requires consulting the sages.


I was so excited to try this because I have a book that I’ve not been able to locate (have tried my own searches, Reddit and online forums) but ChatGPT gave me a lot of hallucinations and listed out real books and incorrectly claimed that all those books had the plot bit that I’d remembered.


Ah! Well. Nevertheless.


Damn good chance that was the one, it fits my reading timeline and I had a lot of Clarke (and my other "Golden Age" authors) - and the staggered shell for pressure reduction could very well by a minor throway plot point - Clarke put a lot of thought into space exploration and his stories were riddled with plausible notions that deserved further study (even if ultimately impractical).


That one was fun. I loved the fusion ramjet exit strategy, and the big reveal at the end.

There was also the one (was it Clarke or Asimov?) where they simply grew genetically engineered Jovian bodies and transferred their minds to them. That one (as you'd expect) ends with the explorers deciding it was way too much fun running around Jupiter as raptor-thingies.


This was "City" by Clifford Simak. Great book. The Jovians were called "lopers".


Yes, that's the one!




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