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"We [science fiction writers] always wanted to believe in "private sector" space -- hucksters make better characters than a government does."
- Larry Niven
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| Reason Hypervelocity Railgun | ||
| Multichamber weapon accelerates tiny splinters of metal. |
| Fisheye is up on his knees now and has torn away the canopy and space blanket that have covered him until this point. In one hand he is holding a long device a couple of inches in diameter, which is the source of the whirring noise. It is a circular bundle of parallel tubes about pencil-sized and a couple of feet long, like a miniaturized Gatling gun. It whirs around so quickly that the individual tubes are difficult to make out... The device is attached to a wrist-thick bundle of black tubes and cables that snake down into the large suitcase... The suitcase has a built-in color monitor screen with graphics giving information about the status of the weapon system...
"See, I told you they'd listen to Reason," Fisheye says, shutting down the whirling gun. "...See, it fires these teeny little metal splinters. They go real fast - more energy than a rifle bullet. Depleted uranium." |
| Technovelgy from Snow Crash,
by Neal Stephenson. Published by Bantam in 1992 Additional resources -
|
This device is a high-tech upgrade to the needle pipe described in Ray Cummings 1928 novel Beyond the Stars. David Gerrold wrote about something similar in his War Against the Chtorr novels.
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
