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"Everything starts as somebody's daydream. And, when you're daydreaming, it is science fiction. It's when you start work out how you put it together, true science fiction becomes real science."
- Larry Niven
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| Fan Ray | ||
| A protective ray screen in the shape of a cone. |
| By now, however, the invaders’ machines that looked like searchlights got into action. They spread fan-like beams of iridescence overhead These beams the operators quickly wove into an interlocking network, making virtually a continuous cone of pulsing light, its base the circle on which the machines had been set up, and its apex about a thousand feet in the air. The planes of the Air Guard returned to the attack, this time dropping bombs as they passed overhead. I broke into a cold sweat. I knew the power of those bombs, and figured my life in terms of split seconds. Then an amazing thing happened. The downrushing bombs bounced off the cone-curtain of light as though from an invisible rubber wall, and exploded harmlessly. Not even the fragments showered around, for these too bounced off in their turn.
 (Fan Rays from 'The Onslaught From Venus' by Frank Phillips) [The column of soldiers was winding its way across the plain in the direction of the beleaguered fortress. In the center marched the infantry and on either side a column of fan«ray machines on lever-like legs spread a fan of rays over the soldiers.] |
| Technovelgy from The Onslaught From Venus,
by Frank Phillips. Published by Science Wonder Stories in 1929 Additional resources -
|
A bit more:
A column of soldiers had issued forth, and was winding its way across the plain in the direction of the beleaguered fortress. But what interested me most keenly about the column was the method used of protecting it from air attack. In the center marched a column of infantry. To either side of them a column of fan-ray machines, which lumbered along on lever-like legs, with a motion not unlike the lurching of our own tanks, their generators all turned outward, spreading a fan of rays, almost horizontal, over the tops of still two other flanking columns of machines. These outside columns played their rays upward and inward over the center of the column, the two films of rays crossing and furnishing complete protection.
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'What would you do,' Eric asked the robot cabdriver, 'if your wife had turned to stone, your best friend were a toad, and you had lost your job?'
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'Now, except for weight and heat, the same conditions prevail in this chamber as in space.'
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'..the synthetic intellects at the Place of Knowledge had far outstripped the minds of men.'
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