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"The best fuzzy rules, the best knowledge, deal with the turning points of the system. If a race-car driver teaches you how to drive, you don't need him to show you how to drive on the straightaway. It's how he handles the curves that matters."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| 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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