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"This category [science fiction] excludes rocket ships that make U-turns, serpent men of Neptune that lust after human maidens, and stories by authors who flunked their Boy Scout merit badge tests in descriptive astronomy."
- Robert Heinlein
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| Slow Pellet Stunner | ||
| A projectile device that throws darts in a manner calculated to get past a force shield. |
In the Dune universe, troops generally wear a personal force field that will repel any fast-moving object. Go slow, however, and you just might get through.
| A rain of blue uniforms came over the cliff wall in front of him, falling
in low-suspensor slowness. In the flashing instant, Hawat had time to see
that they were Sardaukar, hard faces set in battle frenzy, that they were
unshielded and each carried a knife in one hand, a stunner in the other.
A thrown knife caught Hawat's Fremen companion in the throat, hurting
him backward, twisting face down. Hawat had only time to draw his own
knife before blackness of a stunner projectile felled him...
.... With his mother beside him, Paul leaped for the door, seeing Idaho blocking the passage, his blood-pitted eyes there visible through a shield blur, claw hands beyond him, arcs of steel chopping futilely at the shield. There was the orange fire-mouth of a stunner repelled by the shield. Idaho's blades were through it all, flick-flicking, red dripping from them. |
| Technovelgy from Dune,
by Frank Herbert. Published by Putnam in 1965 Additional resources -
|
In the glossary at the end of Dune, stunners are described as shooting "poison- or drug-tipped darts." However, in the two passages quoted above, it seems unlikely that either of these would result in an orange-tinged explosion. You might speculate that the projectiles carry an electrical charge.
Thanks to MrX_TLO for suggesting this item.
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