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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
 |
| Atom-Gun | ||
| A handheld device that sprays atomic fire. |
When visiting the satellites of our solar system, defensive weapons are a necessity.
| Crane sighted at one of the ocher creatures in the lead, pressed the firing button of his atom-gun, saw the Greenie fall as the thin, crashing bolt of atomic fire streaked and struck...
The atom-guns began to crackle again, this time in irregular rhythm... He fired. The streak of fire from his weapon brought a distant scream of agony. |
| Technovelgy from Revolt on the Tenth World,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Amazing Stories in 1940 Additional resources -
|
Hamilton uses the same phrase (with illustrations) in The Face of the Deep (1942):
The words died on his lips as he burst out into the corridor. A mass of gray-clad convict were pouring into tire fore end of tire passage, In their front rank was Moremos, the Venusian murderer, grasping an atom-gun.
Of course, there are a great many variations on the blaster idea (first mentioned in When the Green Star Waned (1925) by Nictzin Dyalhis); consider the annihilator beam from The Conquest of Gola (1931) by L.F. Stone, the de-atomizer) and the >disintegrator from Garrett P. Serviss' 1898 novel Edison's Conquest of Mars.
"Something's wrong! If the prisoners --"
(Atom Gun from 'The Face of the Deep' by Edmond Hamilton)
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'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
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