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"I identify with the weak person; this is one reason why my fictional protagonists are essentially antiheroes."
- Philip K. Dick
 |
| Flame Disintegrator | ||
| Ravening flames from a hand-held device. |
| The Martian legions policed the spaceways ; their flame disintegrators were efficient deterrents to malcontents from Mercury to the asteroids. |
| Technovelgy from The Eternal Wanderer,
by Nat Schachner. Published by 1936 in Astounding Additional resources -
|
See the flame disintegrator in use against a living being:
Before the horrified gaze of the onlookers, a torso with uplifted hand, cleanly dissociated, wabbled in mid-air, and fell with a splintering crash to the smooth, stony floor. Two legs, unconnected, solitary, jerked forward with acquired momentum, to slide to a grisly, toppling fall ten rods farther.
A flame seared out from a Martian gun. It leaped across the intervening space, contacted the plunging Mer- cutian. It caught him square in the middle. Even as his fist was raised to batter at the unprotected head of the Martian leader, there was a crackle, a hiss, and — there was nothingness. Molecules, atoms, electrons, protons — of flesh, of bone, of tissue — had disintegrated into primal, inchoate, invisible stuff.
(Flame disintegrator from 'The Eternal Wanderer')
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Tech news articles related to works by Nat Schachner
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'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
'Oscar picked up a trowel. 'I'm the tool for the mortar,' the little trowel squeaked cheerfully.'
'... he waited for the robotrix attendant to finish fueling up his ship.'
The Roujin Z system provides care to fully bedridden patients - and then some!
'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.'
