Warren Moore is a character in Isaac Asimov's science-fiction short stories "Marooned off Vesta" and "Anniversary".
About Moore[]
Warren Moore is one of three crewmen who survive the catastrophic disabling of the starliner Silver Queen and the subsequent ordeal in orbit about the asteroid 4 Vesta.
Warren Moore survives the wreck of the Silver Queen along with two shipmates and shelters with them in intact compartments of the derelict. The survivors are left with severely limited life support, three airtight compartments, one spacesuit, roughly three days' air, about a week's food, and an abundance of water, and no conventional motive power. Moore is portrayed as steady and practical: he helps maintain routine and morale, takes part in the hands-on work needed to prepare and control the improvised propulsion, and assists in executing the plan that uses the ship’s water as directed reaction mass to alter their trajectory and descend to Vesta.
Years later Moore continues to mark the anniversary of the disaster with his two fellow survivors. On the twentieth anniversary reunion the three learn via Moore's home access to the big computer that a valuable prototype, described in the records as an "opticon", had been aboard the wreck and remains missing. Moore then realizes that, years earlier, he had carelessly pocketed the actual device as a souvenir after a spacewalk; its true name given later as the "anopticon." The tube-like instrument, which uses force-field optics rather than lenses, has important scientific applications and re-ignites public interest in the old wreck when its nature becomes known.
Appearances[]
- Marooned off Vesta (Amazing Stories, March 1939)
- Anniversary (Amazing Stories, March 1959).