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"I realized there was a heavy-duty change coming in biology, and I could write a really compelling novel about catastrophic evolution, punctuated equilibrium."
- Greg Bear
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| Stationary Automatic Blaster | ||
| An automated defensive blaster. |
| "Gimme that chair. I'll demonstrate the gimmick." He stuck it out into the doorway. Instantly two bolts cut across the door, parallel to the ground..."
"Anybody here enough of a technician to sneak up on it and pull its teeth?" ..The colonial trotted ahead, swung around behind the shield covering the stationary automatic blaster, and stopped. He worked away for several minutes, then there was a white flash, intensely bright. He trotted back. "Shorted it out. Bet I blew every overload breaker in the power house." "Sure you fixed it?" "You couldn't dot an 'i' with it now." |
| Technovelgy from Red Planet,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Scribner in 1949 Additional resources -
|
As presented by Heinlein, this device does not appear to be a fully automated sentry gun that detects intruders in a wide area. It works on a simpler sensor, like an electric eye beam. If you break the beam, the gun fires.
Compare to the blaster from When the Green Star Waned (1925) by Nictzin Dyalhis, the neutron disruption blaster from The Complete Paratime (1951) by H. Beam Piper and the meteor blasters from First Contact (1945), by Murray Leinster.
"Becher didn't try to keep men outdoors all night - at least I don't think so. It's automatic. They've put an electric-eye grid across the door. When you break it, a bolt comes across, right where you'd be if you walked through it."
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
