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"it slowly dawned on me that the landscape of science is maybe what interests people a great deal in science fiction."
- Gregory Benford
 |
| 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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| Is The Seattle Ultrasonics C-200 A Heinlein Vibroblade? |
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'The king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions...'
'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
'Then he became aware of a gentle pressure pushing him away from the ship.'
'And now they wre busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on...'
'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
