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"Science fiction is the very literature of change. In fact, it is the only such literature we have."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Laser Rifle | ||
| A laser weapon shaped like a rifle, carried by one man, fired at the shoulder. |
As far as I know, the earliest use of the term "laser rifle".
| “You got the time, A1 ?”
“Ten till.” Soot-barrelled [sic] laser rifles protruding through ink-dipped fronds. . . . “Think anyone’ll come?” “Naw.” |
| Technovelgy from Nine Starships Waiting,
by Roger Zelazny. Published by Fantastic in 1963 Additional resources -
|
Another very early reference to laser rifles in Gree's Hellcats (1966) by CC MacApp:
Compare to laserifle from Door to Anywhere (1966) by Poul Anderson.
Perhaps the earliest "energy weapons" were the Electric rifle from Tom Swift and the underwater gun that fired leyden ball from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Soft popping sounds began, punctuated with angry roars and shrieks of the animals, and occasionally with the splat of a laser rifle. The hunters thrashed by in the brush on both sides of him, and emerged into the small glade at the edge of which he’d chosen to hide.
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More Ideas
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More Ideas
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Tech news articles related to Nine Starships Waiting
Tech news articles related to works by Roger Zelazny
| China's Handheld Electromagnetic Gun |
| Is The Seattle Ultrasonics C-200 A Heinlein Vibroblade? |
| Man Builds 200 Foot Basement Firing Range |
| Russians Create Robot Tank Platoons |
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'...each of them is a neural mapping of the mind of a Tibetan monk who actually lived.'
'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain, through the mediation of the electronic brain in the leg.'
'... every veephone on the continent would display, over and over, two propositions.'
'Completely silent, accurate up to about twenty meters. No recoil...'
'He wore spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.'
