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"Science fiction operates a little bit like science itself, in principle. You've got thousands of people exploring ideas, putting forth their own hypotheses. Most of them are dead wrong; a few stand the test of time; everything looks kind of quaint in hind"
- Peter Watts
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| Shatter-Gun | ||
| A hand-held device that literally scrambles the brains of the victim. |
| Farr made no close inspection, but she was dead too. A shatter-gun vibrating at low intensity had homogenized their brains; their thoughts and memories were brown melange; their chosen avenues into the future had come to a break. Farr stood still. He tried to hold his breath, but he knew the damage had already been done. He backed out and closed the door... |
| Technovelgy from The Houses of Iszm,
by Jack Vance. Published by Better Publications in 1954 Additional resources -
|
Shatter-guns fire shatter-bolts:
Ducking, Farr fell flat.
The shatter-bolt sighed over his head.
Shatter-bolts make a distinctive sound:
Omon Bozhd made his decision. He rose proudly to his full height, the white bands glowing in the darkness. He looked at Farr, reached under his cloak, and brought out a shatter-gun.
Farr watched in fascination; a raid of tremendous scope. Horns rang out from Tjiere town; the vicious fwipp-hiss of shatter-bolts sounded. Two of the brown men became red clots. The man in the doorway bellowed, and the others retreated to the metal snout.
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'The only real cost was in the plastic balloon that guided the growth of the coral and enclosed the coral's special air-borne food.'
'The border was defended by... a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats.'
'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...'
