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"The bottom line in the Dune trilogy is: beware of heroes. Much better to rely on your own judgment, and your own mistakes."
- Frank Herbert
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| X Gun (X-Beam Projector) | ||
| A device that projected soft x-rays into small planetoids to determine their composition. |
So you're out out Saturn-way, looking for mineral deposits in the small bodies ringing the gas giant. What would you use to check to see if a given planetoid was worthwhile?
| As the pencil of soft x-rays, under the guidance of his skilled hand, probed into the twenty-foot planetoid, its reflections trembled ghostily in the milk-luminous chart...
Osgood rotated the handle of the X-beam projector, the "X gun," with the expertness of a machine gunner, and read the fluctuating, melting Fraunhofer designs out of the corner of his eye. |
| Technovelgy from Diamond Planetoid,
by Gordon A. Giles. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1937 Additional resources -
|
What's more, this ship was equipped with a special converter that meant you didn't need to interpret some sort of crystallography design, either. Read up on the spectroscopic robot converter.
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Tech news articles related to works by Gordon A. Giles
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| Chrysalis Generation Ship to Alpha Centauri |
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'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'
'Not like me. A T-1000, advanced prototype. A mimetic poly-alloy. Liquid metal.'
'It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
'The massive feet working the pedals, arms and hands flashing and glinting...'
'There were cubic miles of it, and it glistened like a silvery Christmas tree...'
'Jason had been guiding the caravan of cars as usual...'
"The robot solemnly hit a ball against the wall, picked it up and teed it, hit it again, over and again...'
'There was a wall ahead... It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
