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"...if you want to know what your future looks like, don't waste your time on Analog; read Time magazine. We are already saturated in the future. "
- Peter Watts
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| Polaron Beam | ||
| A unique beam of energy that scatters some of its light at right angles to the direction of propagation. |
A classic battle between a stationary fort on the lunar surface versus a quick, mobile spacecraft is decided by this fort-based weapon.
Readers should note that Clarke alters the version of this weapon for use in the 1955 novelization of the story. See the stilletto beam from the novel Earthlight to see Clarke's final (and perhaps more elegant treatment) of this idea.
| For it was during a lull in the engagement that the polaron beam operated for the first time in history.
The two watchers saw it strike upward like an inverted lightning flash. It was clearly visible along its whole length not merely in patches where it passed through dust and gas. Even in that brief instant of time Wheeler noticed this staggering violation of the laws of optics and wondered at its implications. Not until many years later did he learn how a polaron beam radiates some of its energy at right angles to its direction of propagation so that it can be seen even in a vacuum. The beam went through the Phlegethon as if she did not exist. |
| Technovelgy from Earthlight (Novella),
by Arthur C. Clarke. Published by Wonder Stories in 1951 Additional resources -
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'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
