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"I am first of all not a science fiction writer … I write, I suppose, what the Latin Americans call magic realism."
- Harlan Ellison
 |
| Tubular Field of Force | ||
| Can pull an object through space. |
This is Williamson's version of a tractor beam.
| "...Before we had time to repeat the signal, the Invincible was caught by some tremendous, unseen force. The geodynes were helpless against it. Like a pebble on a string, we were drawn toward that hostile craft."
"Can you conceive of an invisible field of energy, Bob - a tubular field of force, a mathematician might call it - strong enough to drag the Invincible against her fighting geodynes, five thousand miles in five minutes? That's what happened." |
| From The Cometeers,
by Jack Williamson. Published by Street and Smith in 1936 Additional resources -
|
The earliest reference to what most sf fans call a tractor beam is the attractive ray from a 1928 novel by Edmund Hamilton. The phrase "Tractor beam" was originated by E.E. "Doc" Smith in 1931.
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'... the two pairs of waldoes in the screen followed in exact, simultaneous parallelism.'
'THE SPACE VESSEL was traveling swiftly… For over five thousand years they had Voyaged on and on.’
'They circled the vast audiences, dancing, twittering, chirping...'
'The sun-quilt was a patchwork of colors and materials on the inward side, but silvered on the outward side...'
'Jim, I saw them reduce four of my doctors and nurses into those little cubes!'
'Fats Jordan was hanging in the center of the Big Glass Balloon, hugging his guitar to his massive black belly above his purple shorts..'
'When confronted by hills, or rough terrain, it did not stop, but simply slowed until the task demanded equaled its steady power output.'
'... the brain is no longer subjected to the accustomed pull, and it expands slightly in all directions.'
