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"Bureaucracies hide their mistakes, because people's careers are tied to those mistakes. Therefore, bureaucracies are a perfect mechanism for perpetuating mistakes."
- Frank Herbert
 |
| Attractive Ray | ||
| A beam of radiation that pulls. |
This is a very early reference to what sci-fi fans have come to refer to as the "tractor beam." The term tractor beam occurs first in E.E "Doc" Smith's Spacehounds of IPC three years later.
| A spark of intense white light had suddenly broken into being on the platform beneath us, a beam of blinding light that sabbed straight up toward us, bathing the cruiser in its unearthly glow. And suddenly our ship was falling!
Sarto Sen sprang to the controls wrenched around the power-lever. "That ray!" he cried. "It's attractive! - it's pulling us down!" Our ship was vibrating now to the full force of its generators, but still we were falling... |
| From Crashing Suns,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Popular Fiction Publishing Co. in 1928 Additional resources -
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Science Fiction
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1600-1899
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'The Consul remembered his first glimpse of the kilometer-long treeship...'
'Do you know what window washing used to cost by the hour?'
'Once the target is confirmed, it uses an IR laser to send a coded signal back to the parent, clearing it to attack.'
'I filled your bullet hole with flesh putty and the lattice.'
'... it will be easy to form an alphabet which shall enable us to converse with the inhabitants of the moon.'
'From the tower's huge octagonal base radiate wide silvery strips...'
'It was about five feet long... a black bullet head and red camera eyes.'
'The Law Society has strict rules on the use of pseudo-intelligent software...'
