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"Cyberpunk worked when the Internet was in its hand-wound crystal radio phase, when you had to be a sort of hobbyist to do e-mail, and it all had a very steep learning curve. Those days are over."
- William Gibson
 |
| De-atomizing Ray | ||
| Beam of energy causes matter to fly apart. |
| Swiftly the cruisers, more than a thousand in number, approached completion, and now were being equipped with the weapon our scientists had devised for them, a deadly blue ray which had the power of stimulating atomic movement in every molecule of matter it touched to such a point that whatever matter was struch by it vanished beneath its touch, splitting instantly into its original atoms...
...as we swept over them there burned down from our own cruisers the blue de-atomizing ray, striking more than a score of ships in the fleet below, and annihilating them instantly. |
| Technovelgy from Crashing Suns,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Popular Fiction Publishing Co. in 1928 Additional resources -
|
For a more modern description of a disintegration ray, take a look at the classic Wunderland treatymaker, from Larry Niven's 1990 novel Ringworld Engineers.
Also, Philip Nowlan wrote about a disintegrator ray the same year in his story Armageddon: 2149 A.D., the basis for the Buck Rogers serials of the 1930's.
Compare to the Disruptor Tube (Disruptor Ray) from The Emperor of the Stars (1931) by Nat Schachner (w. AL Zagat), the
Bethé blasters from Cities in Flight (1957) by James Blish, the
annihilator beam from Conquest of Gola (1931) by L.F. Stone, the
Vortex Gun from One Against the Legion (1939) by Jack Williamson.
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More Ideas
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More Ideas
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Tech news articles related to works by Edmond Hamilton
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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.'
