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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Metal Solvent Ray Thrower | ||
| Acts like a flame thrower in space. |
He has an unexpected use for this device.
| Here was something: A metal solvent ray thrower, big and powerful enough for his purposes. It was as large as a small cannon, but easy to handle without the gravity pull that the ship once had...
Away he soared into the starry blackness, floating outward like a kite. He traveled for many yards, until he came to the end of the cable with ever so gentle a jerk... He pointed the ray thrower in the direction that the wreck was traveling in and touched the trigger switch. Fire gushed into the dark, fire full of destructive power - and motive power. Like a rocket, the thrower recoiled and hurled backward.
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| Technovelgy from Lost Rocket,
by Manly Wade Wellman. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1941 Additional resources -
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Compare to the emergency repulsion ray from Earth-Venus 12 (1936) by Gabriel Wilson, the reaction pistol from Gordon A. Giles Diamond Planetoid (1937), the propulsion gun from Venus Mines, Incorporated (1931) by Nat Schachner (w. AL Zagat) and the Pistol 'Rocket' (1931) from Buck Rogers: 2430 AD (1931) by Nowlan and Calkin.
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| FLOAT Levitating Train On The Moon ala Clarke |
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| SpaceX Wants A Moonbase Alpha |
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'The pitiless M rays pierced Earth and steel and densest concrete as if they were so much transparent glass...'
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'
'Nanny is different,' Tom Fields murmured... 'she's not like a machine. She's like a person.'
'We made a crude , small cell and were delighted - and, I admit, somewhat surprised - to find it worked.'
'...we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'The clothes and jewelery drew their tiny power requirements from her movements.'
'At the end of each appendage's eight fingers there are tinier appendages...'
'We want to do something to help those who are suffering from tooth loss or absence,' said lead researcher Katsu Takahashi.
