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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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| Attractor | ||
| A beam capable of holding objects motionless, as well as adjusting their position. |
This ray also stopped all movement on the part of the objects and persons being pulled toward the user.
| ...she herself manipulated one of Tubia's greatest power beams, attuning it to the emanations of the two Detaxalan flyers. In less than an ous the two ships were seen throught the mists heading for Tubia; For a moment I grew fearful, but on realizing that they were after all in our grip, and the attractors held every living thing powerless against movement, I grew calm and watched them come over the city and the beam pull them to the ground. |
| Technovelgy from The Conquest of Gola,
by L.F. Stone. Published by Wonder Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
Note that this is not quite the same thing as a tractor beam (from 'Doc' Smith's 1931 novel Space Hounds of IPC), not to mention the earlier attractive ray from Edmond Hamilton's 1928 novel Crashing Suns.
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'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
