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"Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen."
- Larry Niven
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| Blue Ray of Death | ||
| A ray that reduces an organic being to ash instantly. |
The weapon itself is described as "a long metal tube" which is pointed at the victim.
| "All was ready, yet before emerging onto the upper Eartth, they decided to have a sure, deadly weapon against the races of man, who might molest them in their work. So they developed a deadly ray, a ray that crumbles a human body into a puff of white powder instantly..." |
| Technovelgy from Across Space,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Weird Tales in 1926 Additional resources -
|
Here is a description of the ray in use:
Fans of Star Trek TOS may recall the episode By Any Other Name; an alien ray reduced crew members to polyhedra of crumbling salts. The good news was that the person could be reconstituted - the bad news was once a block was crumbled, that person was gone.
...As a number of them [Martians] began to climb up the pillar, the blue ray of death flashed out from inside the box and cut a wide swath through their numbers, reducing those it touched to white powder in an instant!"
(Star Trek crew reduced to crumbling blocks in By Any Other Name)
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Tech news articles related to works by Edmond Hamilton
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'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
'Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows.'
'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
