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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| Paralysis Ray | ||
| A special ray that produces paralysis. |
This is a very early use of this concept.
| "I have invented a weapon, Miss Carlyle, that will render the monster on Satellite Five helpless!" he proclaimed dramatically. "A paralysis ray!"
 (Paralysis Ray from 'Satellite Five' by Arthur K. Barnes) Gerry was dubious. She had seen abortive attempts at paralysis rays before. "What's it's principle?" she asked. "The transmission of a nerve impulse along the nerve fiber is provided by local electrical currents within the fiber itself... Passage over the junction point between cells is effected by a chemical transmitter, acetylcholine... Tommy Strike stirred. "Old stuff, Doc. Sir Henry Dale and Professor Otto Loewi won the Nobel Prize for that discovery seventy years ago. Nineteen thirty-six, wasn't it?" Lunde now exposed the interior of the leaden colored box... The interior showed a bewildering array of tubes and coils, all in miniature... The lens was shutterlike, similar to a camera lens... "This, in effect," went on Professor Lunde in lecture style, "produces a neutron stream... And the penetrating neutron blast destroys the acetylcholine by adding to its atomic structure, thus making it so extremely unstable that it breaks itself up at once." |
| Technovelgy from Satellite Five,
by Arthur K. Barnes. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1938 Additional resources -
|
Compare this to Heinlein's paralysis bomb from Methuselah's Children several years later, the paralyzing eye from L. Sprague de Camp's The Best Laid Scheme (1941), the paralyzing ray from Ray Cumming's Blood of the Moon (1936), the paralyzing cone from The Atomic Conquerors by Edmond Hamilton (1927) and the para-beam from EC Tubbs' Mechanical Monarch (1958).
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Satellite Five
More Ideas
and Technology by Arthur K. Barnes
Tech news articles related to Satellite Five
Tech news articles related to works by Arthur K. Barnes
Paralysis Ray-related
news articles:
- Paralysis Ray Uses Photocontrolled Molecular Switch
- US Special Ops Wants Paralysis Device
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| Has Turkey Been Stealing Rain From Iran? |
| We Need To Build Anti-Drone Systems For Civilian Spaces |
| Bullet Steers Itself! The Advanced Low-Cost Munitions Ordnance ALaMO |
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'...Anything was possible in my imaginary environment.'
'Somewhere in space, a chrome and blue automobile raced the green light of Earth.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair...'
'We had discovered that metal was relatively impervious to the telepathic effect.'
'Detailed plans for the construction of the Gundstetter-Halone warp drive were flowing.'
'Do not waste your priceless company on the unappreciative folds of a sleep pod...'
'...so we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
